Penn CC Construction Crisis Averted
-- Tradeshow Week, 2/18/2008
Philadelphia construction unions agreed to a mandate that they hire minority and female workers for the expansion of the Pennsylvania Convention Center, averting delays to construction of the $700 million project.
The Philadelphia City Council voted to go ahead with the project Feb. 4, after 11 of 15 unions involved agreed that 40 percent of its members working on the project would be minorities and 10 percent women.
“They've agreed to allow the process to move forward,” Albert Mezzaroba, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority, said of the city council.
The city council had required that each union document its current minority makeup and submit minority-inclusion plans for the expansion project. Mezzaroba said two unions, roofers and operating engineers, are working through administrative issues, and the carpenters and electricians are still in negotiations with the city council.
Despite that, the council approved the expansion project, and bids for the expansion “should go out in the next week,” Mezzaroba said after the vote.
Plans still call for the construction to start in March and be completed by October 2010, he added.
