Mass: Unions Hampering Growth
According to the The Journal of New England Technology:
A 2001 state report warned Massachusetts was a “celluloid pariah” in Hollywood because the hostile tactics of the Teamsters union toward film producers scouting locations here. Seven years later, and history is starting to repeat itself, this time in biotech. At Genzyme’s opening of its $250 million life sciences center in Framingham, union workers greeted guests with a picket line and a giant, inflatable rat. The union’s complaint boiled down to this: 54 percent of the project was built with union labor, but that’s not enough.
While state officials roll out the red carpet for biotech companies, labor unions are resorting to intimidation and bullying to demand 100 percent of construction work. Consider the damage that could be done to Massachusetts if a company like Genzyme decided to expand elsewhere. The new facility will mean 350 new jobs, and a cell culture manufacturing facility down the road will produce another 300 jobs. Genzyme employed a fair, open competitive bidding process in choosing qualified contractors to build its facilities. In the end, unions won 54 percent of the work; non-union firms 46 percent. The picketers claimed to protest the compensation paid to non-union workers, but failed to provide any evidence to support their claims, or of labor law violations.
As head of the Merit Construction Alliance, a trade association representing open-shop contractors across Massachusetts, I applaud Genzyme for its expansion and its construction policies. Our members and their employees believe the awarding of construction contracts should be based solely on merit, applying criteria such as quality, value, budget, schedule and safety...click to continue.
