There are people protesting CitiCorp in front of the Pike Creek Citi building at Limestone Road and Linden Hill this week.
With all of the press attention on the Occupy Delaware people, I thought they might be part of that group, so I stopped to get a flyer (see attached) and see what was upsetting them. They had an inflatable thing there yesterday but it had an ED problem so I could not see what it was.
Turns out they are not the Occupy people. It would seem that Citi is moving some offices to the Brandywine Building and building out some office space. The protestors are members of the Carpenters Union who are angry because Citi’s general contractor has hired a sub-contractor that pays their carpenters less than “the area standard for wages and benefits.”
I have not seen anything about it in the paper, so I wanted to share this important knowledge with the readers of Resolute Determination.
Man there are so many confusing things in the world I want to make sure I understand this. They are protesting citi because they hired a GC who then hired subs that the union doesn’t approve of because they do the same exact work for less? That seems fair right? Be mad at a corporation for something they hired another company to handle.
What is more ironic is that the Carpenter’s supported Jack Markell for Governor, and Governor Markell gave Citibank $3.4 million in Delaware taxpayer money for their move. I blogged about it some months ago:
Citibank Gets 3.4 Million All We Got Was The Bill
The Carpenter’s Union flyer fails to mention the State money that went to Citi and the Union’s support for Markell in 2008. Maybe they should get a tent downtown…
Maybe they should get a tent. Next time the Governor gives money to a top 3 biggest bank in America with $2 Trillion in assets, to help them defray renovation costs, the least he can do is make a deal to hire local and pay top wages.
The connection between Occupy and this deal, is the hope that somewhere along the line, everybody starts understanding we can’t have a good economy unless workers are making solid wages. Especially the trades, traditional blue collar jobs providing decent family incomes. Those jobs are as precious as manufacturing jobs. You can’t regulate social conscious. All you can do is spread the word. Like saying buy American. You either get it, or you don’t.
Citi apparently is operating on the old assumption that the less you pay, the better things get.
Bill – who’s to say the sub contractors aren’t getting a good wage? How much are they getting an hour? What is an appropriate wage?
Authur, not sure on any of your questions. I get the feeling from the flyer that Citi’s going around the prevailing wage rates even though they’re spending public funds. I figure that’s what the union workers are complaining about. They were hoping to get some good paying jobs out of this deal, and it looks like they’re bringing workers willing to take the lowest wage.
The trades, the trade unions, the associated apprentice programs are traditional havens where solid blue collar wage can be earned. The kind of wages you can support a family on. It’s decent wages that make young men and women interested in learning a trade.
There’s still a niche where union wage bricklayers, carpenters, masonry, electrical are paid decent middle class wages. What that number would be these days? Maybe $30-40 an hour with benefits? Way less than a lawyer, but more than working at WalMart. That would be around $60K a year if you worked 52 weeks, but in the trades, with weather, downtime, it’s probably far fewer weeks a year than that. So $30 an hour with benefits probably is more like earning 35 or 40k a year. That’s probably all those protesters were protesting for. Maybe around $30 an hour for installing dry wall.
I know how the market works. You go the cheapest route. But things are changing. The word is out. American workers need to get paid good so they can buy things. Henry Ford figured that out a long time ago.
I don’t see the union insignia on the flyer. Is the carpenter’s union using non-union printers…shame on them.
I have a friend working for a roofing company on a project in NJ. It is a prevailing wage/state project. He is making over $100 per hour to do work that would normally pay $20 – $25 an hour. If he is seeing over $100/hour in his check – how much is the company he’s working for getting from the state for him being there? They are making money per hour off his labor too!
You might want to verify those NJ numbers. In Delaware the prevailing wage rates for the trades are published. The PW hourly rate for a roofer is around $21. A carpenter, the subject of the protest flyer, is around $40 hour.