TOWNSHIP OF WASHINGTON, NJ—Some two dozen men identifying themselves as members of Iron Workers Local 11 waved protest signs outside Westwood Regional Jr./Sr. High School on Ridgewood Road Thursday morning, protesting the presence of nonunion iron workers doing work at the school.
Taking shape beneath a crane near the running track are the bones of a $3 million maintenance garage and concession stand, slated for a 2018 opening.
Passing vehicles occasionally honked their horns in solidarity with the protest—some of them, truck horns, blasting the air in the otherwise quiet neighborhood.
“That’s us, that’s our jobs, our livelihood,” one man said, indicating the construction site, which was out of sight of the protest, though not necessarily of students, faculty, and staff.
A few hundred feet away, while students exercised adjacent to the site, a man identifying himself as project’s general contractor spoke briefly to a reporter from behind the project’s chain-link fence.
He said that he was under no obligation to hire union workers, as the work is given under prevailing wages through a government contract.
While he spoke, men evidently paid by Campbell Welding crouched to pick up metal beams.
“We don’t really have to worry about them [unions],” the man said. He declined to give his name, and turned his back on further questions, conferring with a man referring to construction drawings.
Public records give the project’s general contractor as ML Inc. of Passaic.
Inside the school, the district’s business administrator, Keith Rosado, told the Pascack Press “I haven’t looked at who they’ve hired or who their subs are. I assume they [the protestors] followed the truck from the yard” to the high school.
He said if it’s true that the iron workers are non-union, then perhaps the carpenters, hypothetically, would belong to a union.
“I just don’t know,” he said.
He said the project is being paid as a flat fee, and that any general contractor would be within its rights not to hire union workers for this job, as New Jersey is a prevailing wage state, a designation aimed at keeping costs competitive on public projects.
The Department of Labor says that in order for a project to be subject to prevailing wage, the total value of the project must exceed $15,444, if the work is being done for, or on property or premises owned by, a municipality or $2,000 if the work is being done for, or on property or premises owned by, any other public entity, including boards of education and municipal utility authorities.
Meanwhile, the school district has proposed a $24 million middle school expansion in the Borough of Westwood. Voters will decide that at a Dec. 12 referendum. Plans and other information are available to view at the district’s website.
A representative for Iron Workers Local 11 did not respond to two calls for comment by this newspaper’s deadline.
The local, based in Bloomfield, says on its website that it has territorial jurisdiction in Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Passaic, Sussex, Somerset and Union counties, and part of Ocean County.