Northwest labor press., July 02, 2010, Page 3, Image 3

July 2, 2010:NWLP
6/29/10
9:57 AM
Page 3
...Laborers scale back home weatherization training for lack of jobs
through the training at the Laborers’ fa-
cility near Corvallis. Just six of them
big structural changes take time,” said have been hired by Clean Energy Works
Clean Energy Works Portland Director Portland contractors — even though
Andria Jacob. Jacob said it took longer participating contractors are required to
than expected to work out the program’s hire all new workers from training pro-
financing; the 500 retrofits are now ex- grams the program designates.
pected to be completed by the end of
To get the designation, training cen-
2010.
ters must partner with at least three
Six months’ delay might not matter, women or minority pre-apprenticeship
except that unions were rushed to train programs, and ensure that a majority of
workers who have
its trainees are
now waited as long
women, people of
But in this case, the
as seven months
color, residents of
training centers —
without employ-
low-income commu-
ment. They are
nities or other disad-
with funding from
mostly young
vantaged people. The
women and minor- union workers and
Laborers’ weatheriza-
ity workers new to
tion program was the
contractors — are
construction, and
first to get that desig-
training workers who nation, on Feb. 8. A
were recruited by
minority pre-ap-
similar program of-
are not union
prenticeship pro-
fered by the Pacific
members, and who
grams with talk of
Northwest Carpenters
steady work at a liv- are then hired by
Institute was the sec-
ing wage.
ond, three days later.
“Last year they nonunion contractors.
The Carpenters’
said, ‘You need to
three-week training
do a training pro-
program has had similar results: 24
gram by the end of October, because workers trained, with only a handful
the beginning of November they’re go- employed. Mt. Hood Community Col-
ing to be hiring people,’” said Al De- lege is looking to enter the program as a
Vita, director of the Oregon Laborers third designated training facility.
Training Center. “Nobody got hired by
When Clean Energy Works Portland
the first of the year, and we had already was being developed, Laborers and
finished two classes by the time one Carpenters union representatives were
person got hired.”
enthusiastic partners. They spent
Forty-six workers have now gone months in stakeholder meetings craft-
(From Page 1)
EcoTech employee Avery Pelote puts an insulation-blowing hose into a hole
drilled into an uninsulated cavity in a Northeast Portland home. Pelote, 20,
was recruited by Portland Youth Builders to take part in a new four-week
weatherization training program offered by the Laborers Oregon Training
Center, and is one of the first program graduates to find employment in the
field.
ing a community workforce agreement
that sets a wage and benefit floor for
workers (currently $15 an hour), and
enables a union foothold in a market
that’s said to be on the cusp of rapid ex-
pansion.
Under the agreement, contractors
must stay neutral if workers seek to
unionize, and must recognize a union if
a majority of their workers want to join
one. But no contractor has been union-
ized in this way yet. Instead union or-
ganizers are trying to persuade contrac-
tors to sign union agreements, selling
them on the value of skilled union
workers, an economical benefit pack-
age, and ready access to workers —
when they need them — through the
union hiring hall. None of the 12 Clean
Energy Works Portland contractors
have signed on so far.
An exception to that is the pilot pro-
ject’s final “neighborhood” phase — a
bright spot from the union standpoint.
While the first 400 homeowners come
from throughout the city, the final 100
will come from the Cully neighborhood
in Northeast Portland. Clean Energy
Works Portland is paying the faith-la-
bor-community group Metropolitan Al-
liance for Common Good (MACG)
$20,000 to recruit in that neighborhood.
For those 100 homes, the subcontrac-
tors doing the HVAC, plumbing, and
electrical work of installing furnaces
and water heaters will be signatory to
Sheet Metal Workers Local 16,
Plumbers and Fitters Local 290, and
Electrical Workers Local 48. And the
weatherization work itself will be done
by six contractors that have signed the
equivalent of a project labor agreement
with the Laborers: EcoTech, Chick of
All Trades, Sustainable Solutions Un-
limited, Faison Construction, Balanced
Energy Solutions, and Abacus Energy
Solutions. Their workers will receive
the Laborers’ newly-set residential
weatherization union scale when they
are retrofitting the 100 houses in the
Cully neighborhood: $16 an hour, plus
$4.45 an hour in benefits. They’ll also
be Laborers union members temporar-
ily — for the duration of the work.
To partner with Clean Energy Works
Portland, the two unions had to change
the way they normally work. Ordinar-
ily, union training centers train only
union apprentices, and trainees then
find union employment or are dis-
patched to union-signatory contractors
by a union hall. But in this case, the
training centers — with funding from
union workers and contractors — are
training workers who are not union
members, and who are then hired by
nonunion contractors.
“We agreed with the City to make a
good faith effort to supply all these non-
union employers with people from
qualified training programs,” DeVita
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