BLUE WAVE: However, now that Yonkers’ Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins is in control of the majority in the Senate, observers say the legislation has a good chance of getting enacted this session.
YONKERS: Some Yonkers developers and business leaders are apoplectic over proposed state legislation that would require them to pay union wages on projects that receive any public funds, which they say will curtail growth
The proposed legislation would redefine public projects to include private projects that receive government incentives or any publicly funded financial assistance.
It would also mandate that those projects pay prevailing wages according to a schedule set by the state’s Department of Labor and labor union representatives.
Yonkers union officials who have lobbied hard for the measure, the bill, opponents say, would add higher labor costs to new real estate developments.
There is a carve out in the bill that exempts multifamily projects where at least 75 percent of the units are affordable to people earning 60 percent or less than the area median income.
Though state law already requires that workers on public projects be paid prevailing wages, the proposed law would expand that mandate to public/private partnerships and private developments or businesses that get tax breaks or economic incentives from industrial development agencies for expansions and job creation.
Opponents of the bill are hoping it will be watered down or heavily amended rather than passed as written.
Just a year after the Yonkers IDA adopted a rule forcing developers that get incentives to sign project labor agreements with union contractors, the city cancelled it because its IDA went the entire year without a deal.
Yonkers’ Mayor Mike Spano called the pilot program “a dismal failure.” in the press
