Construction unions criticized by outgoing PDC chair Hennessee

Union officials attending a Portland Development Commission meeting May 11 were “stunned” and “insulted” by comments the panel’s chair made at the close of the meeting. The union officials were testifying against a lawsuit commissioners were considering over a prevailing wage ruling the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) made on one of its projects.

“We were called everything but racists” by PDC Chairman Matt Hennessee, said Cherry Harris, who testified on behalf of Operating Engineers Local 701 and the Metropolitan Alliance for Common Good (MACG), a coalition of religious, community and neighborhood activists, of which she is co-chair.

“We were stunned. His comments were way over the top,” Harris told the NW Labor Press.

“I was really insulted that he would accuse me and the building trades basically of being racist,” said Don Kool, a business representative of Plumbers and Fitters Local 290. Hennessee singled out Kool by name in his closing remarks. “He was totally out of line. He used his position of authority for his own personal agenda.”

Hennessee, chief executive officer of Quicktrak Inc. a high-tech and risk management company, and pastor at Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church, is black. He, along with PDC’s executive director and chief legal counsel are resigning their respective posts this summer.

The agenda item at hand was a $2.34 million PDC project to redevelop an office building and make street improvements for Henry V Events at 6360 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

On March 14, BOLI ruled that all construction work on the jobsite was subject to state prevailing wage laws because it included public financing of nearly $1.5 million. [Prevailing wage rate laws apply to public works construction projects over $25,000.]

PDC disagreed, claiming that it was only providing low-cost loans on a private development that it will not own, operate or occupy. The commission expressed concern that using contractors that pay prevailing wages could reduce the number of units they’re able to build, and jeopardize the goal of awarding contracts to minority and women-owned businesses.

“PDC does not have a clear understanding of when prevailing wage requirements do and do not apply,” Harris testified. “BOLI is charged with ensuring compliance with prevailing wage law. They are the experts in this area. In this case, BOLI has carefully reviewed the project and determined that you got it wrong. How many taxpayer dollars are we going to waste fighting another public agency over doing what you are morally and legally bound to do? ”

Kool pointed to PDC’s mission statement of promoting living-wage jobs and revitalizing the Portland-area workforce. “It appears to us in labor you are coming up with some very creative ways to skirt prevailing wage laws. You can’t create quality jobs by undermining area standards.”

After listening to arguments both for and against paying prevailing wages on the project, commissioners made brief comments before voting unanimously to go forward with the lawsuit. Before his vote, Hennessee said about organized labor:

“The unions have a whole lot of work to do on the participation of minorities and women — not just in your apprenticeship programs — but in your leadership and in your front offices, and you know that. Your numbers do not look good, and you know that. We want to work with you, but it’s important that you work with us.”

Hennessee concluded, “I say this last thing, particularly for Mr. Kool, I would hope that you and others listen to what’s being asked for ... that if you put your arms around brothers and sisters who are hispanic, Asian and African-American the way you put your arms around your brothers and sisters who look just like you — when that happens there will be more people who not only come into apprenticeship, but who graduate to journeymen and journeywomen. That will be a good day for all of us.”

After adjournment, Kool engaged in a heated exchange with Hennessee. “I was extremely insulted by his remarks and I let him know it,” Kool told the Labor Press.

Later, Pete Savage, regional manager of the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters, noted the irony in Hennessee’s remarks, because the very next day the Oregon Association of Minority Entrepreneurs gave its annual contractors award for most contracts awarded to minority, women and emerging small businesses to unionized Impreglio/Healy for work on the Westside Big Pipe sewer tunnel project.

“This is a prevailing wage project managed by a company that is signatory with many trade unions,” Savage said, adding that minorities make up approximately 20 percent of the city’s population and that “21 percent of the people being trained by the Carpenters Union are minority.”

Additionally, last year building trades unions ratified a deal with PDC on the South Waterfront project that calls for expanding recruitment of minority and women in the trades over the next 10 years.

© Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc.