...sides were saying they were committed to making this work. And we went back to New York and got to work. Once a tentative agreement was in place LaBarbera and Colletti and their executive teams began laying out a plan for how the agreement would be used. They agreed to start with a few pilot projects.
LABARBERA: We decided to create an application process. The CMs would apply on behalf of an owner. It was a really involved six-page application asking everything from original cost estimates to the number of man-hours per trade. Once all the approvals were complete, the agreement would be executed. Every project needed to demonstrate that there was a defined economic reason for the PLA. There were some projects that we didn’t feel the PLA was appropriate for, and we didn’t grant it. We weren’t just approving every application that came in to us.
COLLETTI: Within a week or two of receiving an application we schedule a meeting of our labor management committee, Gary takes it back to his executive board which approves it and sends it to Washington to be approved by each union’s international president. The entire process is about two weeks.
With 30 PLA projects currently under way, and, as of October 4, 20 more in the pipeline, the CIP acknowledges the agreement’s quick success and ponders its future - and its legacy.
LABARBERA: When you embark on something that’s never been done before, you have to set your goal, then you have to give it some time to work. Once that happens your trust levels go up even more and you have something to point to. Right now we’re looking at trying to tailor the agreement now to include affordable housing and recapture that market. Well, now we’re able to look at what we’ve done with Beekman Tower in Lower Manhattan or Tower 111 in Midtown and we can show people what we’ve put together and that we’ve seen success with it.
DI FILLIPPO: There are going to be owners who aren’t as thankful for what we did, they didn’t get the bang they thought they should get. There are going to be unions that aren’t all happy. But this agreement became the symbol that labor and management can come together, get something done and both put our names on it. It has started the discussion for other specific PLAs that will come from this. There’s no doubt in my mind we’ll be able to put agreements together for every union job in the city.
SPINOLA: We estimate that there are 450 projects out there that are either stalled or are in trouble. So I think it’s good that something got done. Any savings will be helpful, and I think there will be some. Do I still believe we could use more? Sure. But we have what we have. We distributed the information on [the PLA] to all our members and told them it was a viable option. I think those that are hurting are clearly putting it to use.
COLLETTI: The real estate owners will always say, “If you can do more, we’ll take it.” But they’re all looking to take advantage of the terms and conditions in the agreement as it exists now. Just recently I had a developer come in and say he wasn’t aware of the agreement until he’d purchased two pieces of property and had an anchor tenant in place, and when he went to the bank to get his construction loan, the bank asked if his numbers were based on the new project labor agreement. And he’d never heard of it. They told him they wouldn’t even consider his loan application until he’d talked to us. He called Gary right away and a week later we had approved his application. Now his projects are going to go.
LABARBERA: I think that over the next several years, the industry is going to adapt but part of that will have to be through collective bargaining. You can’t use a PLA in the private sector to take the place of collective bargaining, so it cannot detract from that process. This was a vehicle that was designed to address a specific crisis in a specific time. You can’t use PLAs to address every problem.
BONANZA: It was definitely set up as a one-time type of deal, but when each union goes to the table in the future, nobody will forget what went on during these times.
COLLETTI: A project labor agreement is like an economic stimulus bill in many ways. In the next two or three years, some of the major trades that made major changes have their agreements coming up. We recognize we have to change the way we do business. How we do that is up to each individual trade through the collective bargaining process. And that’s how you make permanent change to put us in a better position once the market does come back.
