UFT Unloads Bonds For Non-Union Building Job; Earmarked for Teacher Housing
By MICHELLE FRIEDMAN

The United Federation of Teachers has sold its bonds supporting the non-union construction of Boricua Village in The Bronx.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: An untenable partnership.

Controversy over the housing development first arose last December after the Carpenters union expressed outrage over the developer's refusal to pay prevailing wages. The $28 million investment by the Teachers Retirement Association was accompanied by a deal to give preference for the 234 housing units to teachers.

An Undesirable Partner

A union official said that the UFT was warned repeatedly about Atlantic Development Corporation, which has a reputation in housing advocacy circles as frequently seeking to avoid union labor. The company has refused to use union workers or pay the prevailing wage for various construction jobs at the Bronx development, even though it bought the 41-lot site from the city for $1 per lot. It will also be exempt from real-estate taxes for 25 years for part of the land.

The official, who spoke conditioned on anonymity, sympathized with the UFT's desire to create affordable housing for its members, but said that it could not do so at the expense of other unionized workers. Other city labor officials expressed similar sentiments, saying that there should be no conflict between using union labor and building affordable housing.

"It's absolutely possible, and there's actually no reason why it couldn't have been done all along," Ed Ott, AFL-CIO New York City Central Labor Council executive director, said late last fall when the situation emerged. "Workers in this city should not have to subsidize housing with inferior wages and standards."

A spokesman for the UFT said last week, "The Comptroller's Office, at the behest of the Teacher members of the TRS and the UFT, has been attempting to sell the bonds for the affordable housing being built at Boricua Village project. The union does not want to be associated with a housing project where workers are not being paid the prevailing wages. That goes against everything we stand for."

'Facts Misrepresented'

He went on to say that when the UFT entered into the contract "there was a material misrepresentation made to the UFT regarding the project, which was to provide 200 units of housing for educators who are members of the Teachers' Retirement System."

He said that the union supported the project only on the condition that it would be built by unionized workers paid prevailing wage rates. When the UFT "discovered that was not the case, we did everything we could to pressure the developer to do right by its workers. When the developer failed to rectify the situation, we wrote to the Teachers' Retirement System trustees on Dec. 3 to ask them to make every effort to remove TRS from the project."