NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
April 6, 2018 | PAGE 11
JOBS
After lobbying for a state law to
give Facebook server farms more
favorable tax treatment, some lo-
cal building trades union leaders
are irked to find that work on an
expansion of the Facebook data
center in Prineville is going to
nonunion subcontractors that pay
below area-standard wages, use
workers from out of state, and fail
to take part in state-registered ap-
prenticeship training programs.
Portland-based Fortis Con-
struction, the general contractor
on the job, is itself signatory
with the Laborers and Carpen-
ters, and it has hired union-sig-
natory subcontractors on the
job. But it also hired non-union
Taylor Northwest of Bend, Ore-
gon, to move earth and prepare
the building foundation;
nonunion Sure Steel of Utah to
do structural steel erection; and
nonunion Cobra BEC of
Spokane to do roofing and
metal wall panels.
“What it boils down to is that
they’re bringing folks in from out
of state to do the work,” said Op-
erating Engineers Local 701
Business Manager Jim Anderson.
Facebook has been building
Photo by Terry Casey, courtesy of IUOE Local 701
Shame on Fortis? Or should it be ‘Shame on Facebook?’
“Shame on Fortis” says a banner Operating Engineers Local 701 put up
March 27 outside the Facebook construction site in Prineville, Oregon.
data centers in Central Oregon
since 2010, drawn by the cheap
land, cheap electricity, cool cli-
mate … and the tax breaks. Ore-
gon taxpayers are indirectly sub-
sidizing the project, in that
Facebook is receiving a state
“Enterprise Zone” property tax
abatement. From 2012 to 2017,
the company saved $71.5 million
in Oregon taxes through the pro-
gram, which gives companies a
15-year property tax holiday on
the value of new equipment and
buildings they install. For years,
the Oregon State Building and
Construction Trades Council has
tried but failed to get the Legisla-
ture to require that construction
jobs on projects getting the Enter-
prise Zone abatement be paid the
area prevailing wage.
Facebook has completed three
buildings so far at its mammoth
data center campus. Last Decem-
ber, it announced plans to add
two more buildings totaling
900,000 square feet. The work is
forecast to keep construction
crews busy for four years.
On its own Facebook page for
the Prineville Data Center, Face-
book says it’s committed to use
local workers: “From the start,
we have been committed to hir-
ing locally and using local con-
tractors and suppliers where pos-
sible to construct, operate, supply
and maintain the data center here
in Oregon.”
But when Iron Workers Local
29 President Shane Nels visited
the work site in March, he found
Sure Steel workers driving per-
sonal vehicles with license plates
from Florida, Utah, and Califor-
nia. Asking around, he found
ironworker wages were $15 to
$18 an hour — less than half the
union ironworker wage of $36.23
an hour (not to mention $26.89
an hour of union benefits.) [Non-
union heavy machinery opera-
tors, meanwhile, are making
about $10 an hour less in wages,
Anderson says.]
Nels found that multiple
union-signatory contractors that
were capable of doing the work
with local workers weren’t in-
vited to bid on the job.
“It doesn’t take CSI to figure
out when we’re being excluded,”
Nels said.
Roofers Local 49 Business
Manager Russ Garnett says Port-
land-based union-signatory con-
tractor McDonald & Wetle bid on
the job, but lost out to the
nonunion firm. Last time around,
McDonald & Wetle did the work
at the Facebook data center.
All this stings a bit, consider-
ing that building trades union rep-
resentatives advocated at the Ore-
gon Legislature in favor of a tax
change to benefit data center
owners. The issue was whether
companies would be taxed, like
communication companies,
based in part on the value of their
brand and other “intangibles.”
Legislators voted to change the
law so that they would not be.
Responding to emailed ques-
tions, a Facebook spokesperson
declined to address wage or ap-
prentice issues, but said 90 per-
cent of the contracts awarded so
far on the Prineville expansion
have gone to Oregon contrac-
tors, and over 80 percent have
gone to union subcontractors.
— Don McIntosh
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