NEW DEVELOPMENTS AND NEW INDUSTRIES
Brothers and Sisters, when I first joined DC 35 as an apprentice, some seasoned journeymen gave me advice that stays with me today. The first one was to stay active in the Union, your local, and your community. The other one was “Don’t just come in for a job, come in to do the job.” At the time I wasn’t sure what they meant by that statement, but as the years passed on, I slowly understood. Every day is a fight for the underprivileged and the working class. We fight for our Jurisdiction, we fight for what we bargain in our CBA, and we fight to lift up people who don’t have a voice. We fight for our communities to make them a better place, we fight for community standards, and we fight for local jobs for local people. These are fights we should all be a part of as a union because when we fight, we win, and when we fight as one we win together.
It is important to expose the harm done when development teams and their contractors cut corners on community standards and don’t go through the process of letting the communities have their voices heard. When they cut corners on safety, wages, and benefits, it hurts local communities. We must stand with our communities, rise up with our building trades, and show them we are, across the board, a union city, towns, and state. DC 35, with the Boston Building Trades, has had job actions and rallies to combat these issues that have come into our city. On188 High St, a development team is building a 7-story 24-room self-check-in boutique hotel where workers are getting paid $16 an hour.
Because of these job actions we have had talks with the development team and Joe Guarino has sent them over a couple of contractors to bid on the work for this project. We also had a huge rally over at Boylston St against a development team and their contractors, where a section of Boylston Street was shut down to inform the community of the bad players that were encroaching on our jurisdiction and undermining all we have fought for.
We will send the first group of 8 members for SPRAT training for offshore wind down to Bristol, Rhode Island at the KONG facility to get their SPRAT level 1 rope access training. This is a four day training with a practical and evaluation on the fifth day. If passed, members will receive their certificate and can begin accumulating hours to advance to level 2 and 3 rope access certifications. Marty Rivera, Eric Redding, and I spoke to KONG members and their trainers about the training. This is not going to be easy for our members because it’s not something they do every day, and I wish them all well.
In October of last year, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island procured future wind energy projects together rather than individually as part of a joint agreement the state governors announced, the first such multistate agreement in the nation. The partnership could lead to the three states acquiring clean energy at more competitive and affordable rates. Energy from offshore wind projects is seen as key to meeting each state’s climate change goals.
The new multistate agreement could become a model for other parts of the country. In January, John Drinkwater and I attended a joint offshore wind procurement with many trade unions, AFL-CIO members from each state, Bluegreen Alliance, and Climate Jobs. We discussed how we can take advantage of this unique opportunity to build worker power in this new growing industry. This announcement by the Governors of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island to coordinate the offshore wind procurement presents a unique opportunity to present unified demands around labor standards to developers who seek to win procurement bids from the three states. This alliance between the trade unions, AFL-CIO, Bluegreen Alliance, and Climate Jobs will be having more meetings as this situation develops daily.
We are monitoring a major upcoming project, Dorchester Bay City, a proposed development planned for a 36-acre site on the Columbia Point peninsula. This development, which was approved by the Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA) and has been negotiated for a Project Labor Agreement (PLA), will require about 15-20 years of construction. This development proposes 21 buildings including a mix of office, research and development, residential, retail, restaurant, commercial, community, cultural, and other uses.
