Yesterday Cleveland Signed Community Benefits Agreement

Community benefits agreement aims to keep construction work local

By JAY MILLER
1:46 pm, September 16, 2013

A group of Cleveland’s leading institutions, some of the city’s largest contractors and the building trades unions today formally endorsed an agreement designed to provide what Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson described as “a self-help approach to economic development.”

Called a community benefits agreement, or CBA, the memorandum — signed by 10 organizations that expect to spend billions of dollars on construction projects in the next several years — sets standards designed to encourage the use of local labor and local contracting firms, in particular minority and female workers and firms.

It also would expand apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs and study best practices for improving diversity and inclusion in the construction industry, which Mayor Jackson said is critical for training Cleveland residents for jobs in the building trades.

“Never before have you seen the private sector step forward and voluntarily say they would participate in a program that would result in community benefits,” Mayor Jackson told Crain’s Cleveland Business. “We need to keep those dollars local and spend them in a way that creates jobs and support businesses. Not only will this construction activity support local construction firms, but they have to buy their goods and materials” locally as well.

University Hospitals Health System, in its Vision 2010 construction program, laid the foundation for this community benefits agreement when it made a concerted effort to ensure that as much as possible of the $1.2 billion it spent on construction between 2005 and 2010 benefited local businesses and workers.

“This is really about culture change,” said Steven Standley, chief administrative officer of UH, who was among the signers of the CBA this morning in the Red Room at Cleveland City Hall. Mr. Standley said the hospital system believes it needs to play a role in developing the next generation of local construction workers, construction firms and even health care workers.

“It’s really about pipeline,” he said. “Everybody is starting to figure out that we don’t have the next generation of people ready to take over and everyone is starting to realize” they must help support that next generation locally.

In addition to UH, endorsers of the seven-page CBA memorandum of understanding were William Peacock, chief of operations for The Cleveland Clinic Foundation; Scott Miller, vice president of Dominion East Ohio; Fred Geis, president of Geis Cos.; Michael Heise, president of The Medical Center Co.; Julius Ciaccia Jr., executive director of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District; Stephen Campbell, vice president of campus planning and facilities management at Case Western Reserve University; and Eric Gordon, CEO of the Cleveland Municipal School District.

The CBA has been in the works for several years and the memorandum of understanding that was endorsed last February by the city of Cleveland, the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the Construction Employers Association, the Hispanic Roundtable, Hard Hatted Women, the Urban League of Greater Cleveland, Cuyahoga Community College, and the Cleveland Building and Construction Trades Council.

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