Undercutting Workers in Charlotte

The Democratic National Convention Committee has let it be known that non-union construction workers and companies need not apply as they have made favoring their union allies a key critieria to get work on the convention.

The DNCC’s Sept. 13 request for proposal for construction managers and event architects states that the DNCC will enter into a labor agreement with the construction manager, who will be obligated to ensure that nearly all work at the site be covered by union monopoly bargaining agreements to the “maximum extent possible.”

Republican candidate for Mayor of Charlotte Scott Stone wants to see exactly what is in these agreements.  He issued a letter requesting the DNCC release the actual project labor agreements and also issued a press release on October 26 calling on the  DNC Host Committee to release the project labor agreements that vendors will be required to sign. At a press conference in Charlotte, Stone presented a formal letter addressed to Mayor Foxx and the DNC Host Committee asking for the labor agreements to be made public.

Stone expressed his concern that at a time when other states around the country are outlawing project labor agreements, Charlotte and North Carolina – at the hands of the DNC – are heading toward them and down a slippery slope. “As project labor agreements are going away in Michigan, here in the Right-To-Work state of North Carolina they’re actually popping up.”