Calling it “revolutionary,” union leaders applauded the Metropolitan Sewer District’s plan to employ local, minority and women workers on the upcoming $4.7 billion project, presented by MSD Executive Director Jeff Theerman at the Aug. 16 stakeholders meeting.
“What he presented to the board today is monumental, revolutionary and historical,” said Terry Nelson, executive secretary-treasurer of the Carpenters’ District Council of Greater St. Louis.
“We’ve been living under 25 [percent minority business enterprise participation] and 5 [percent women business enterprise] in the City of St. Louis for the last 32 years, and it has not made a difference in the minority workforce, because 25 and 5 did not include the workforce.”
While still being drafted by MSD attorneys, Theerman said MSD’s Community Benefit Agreement will provide concrete minority participation guidelines for contracts over the duration of the court agreement.
In August 2011, the EPA announced a settlement agreement that calls for MSD to spend $4.7 billion over the next 23 years to eradicate over 350 sewer overflows. In 2007, the State of Missouri and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed a lawsuit against MSD – in part because untreated sewage was flowing into the Mississippi River.
In June, the Missouri NAACP passed a resolution that Theerman said crystallized for MSD several areas that need to be discussed. One concept in the community benefits agreement refers to first-source hiring.
“About 1.3 million people in our service area are going to pay the bill for this work, and they need to have a shot at doing some of this work,” Theerman said.
The district will develop a no-cost referral process for contractors to find minority businesses. The target group would be low-income, minority, and women that are in the district that are qualified to do work, he said.
The second concept is expanding the district’s subcontracting programs and outreach. Theerman said the district will offer a variety of project sizes so that startups can bid on the right project size for them.
“We have a lot of work to do, so it’s possible to have a lot of different work in a lot of different bucket sizes,” Theerman said.
As part of the agreement, the district will also have various levels of compliance monitoring, including in-house monitoring, third-party monitoring and a monitoring oversight committee.
Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis NAACP, said one of the most important aspects of the community benefits agreement is that it gives teeth to the district’s minority participation goals. At the stakeholders’ meeting, Pruitt told union leaders if they can’t meet the goals then the agreement enables MSD to find contractors – union or non-union – who can.
“We only have one goal – it’s to create a legit high-skilled diversified workforce by any means possible,” Pruitt said.
“We are no way saying that if it’s your position that ‘We have done anything and everything and what comes out is all that is’ that we are going to fold our hands and accept the fact that this trained workforce is not happening and we just give up. That’s not going to happen.”
No new apprenticeship program
The labor unions were pleased to hear Theerman’s announcement that the district will not create its own apprenticeship program.
“It would be the wrong direction for MSD to create an apprenticeship program,” Theerman said. “From the pre-apprenticeship standpoint, there is room for MSD to get involved and help meet goals.”
The district has not set a budget amount for the pre-apprenticeship program. That will depend on the disparity study and the minority participation goals, he said.
Jeff Aboussie, executive secretary-treasurer at St. Louis Building & Construction Trades Council, presented a document drafted on behalf of all the labor organizations.
“It says that we are committed to the findings of the disparity study,” Aboussie said.
“We’ve come up with language that we feel is proper, recognizing the fact that we train and we train well and we spend a lot of money training our apprentices at no cost to the taxpayers. It’s refreshing to hear that you don’t want to be a direct competitor.”
Theerman said the district has been working with the NAACP and stakeholders for months to come up with a draft of the community benefits agreement, which will be finalized after the disparity study results are released in the fall.
“When you think about these things, there are a lot of moving parts,” Theerman said. “I would rather go back and negotiate the consent decree. This is harder. But it is going something we can be proud of.”