Repost: City of Portland commits to build union, and use minority workers and contractors

Sep 18, 2012 

By DON McINTOSH, Associate Editor

The City of Portland is about to try out a new kind of project labor agreement on public construction contracts. The 23-page “Model Community Benefits Agreement” approved Sept. 5 mandates that on future City construction projects, unions will represent workers, and women and minority workers and contractors will have expanded opportunities. The community benefits agreement, approved in a 5-0 vote, was developed in nearly two years of meetings among unions, minority contractors, pre-apprenticeship training programs, and city officials, and will apply to projects of over $15 million.

The agreement sets goals:

• At least 18 percent of the work will be performed by minorities, and 9 percent by women, and the targets apply both to journeymen and apprentices;
• At least 20 percent of the work on contracts of over $200,000 (and subcontracts of over $100,000) will be performed by apprentices;
• At least 20 percent of the hard construction costs will go to women-owned, minority-owned and “disadvantaged” businesses, and joint ventures with minority and women-owned businesses will get a preference of up to 5 percent in bidding on contracts; and
• At least 30 percent of the workforce will be hired from areas identified by the U.S. Small Business Administration as “historically underutilized business” zones, census tracts that include downtown Portland, inner Southeast and Northeast Portland, and the Lents, and Cully neighborhoods in outer Southeast and Northeast, as well as areas of Gresham, Hillsboro and western Clark County.

To read the full article, visit nwlaborpress.org.