A resolution to require union-friendly “project labor agreements” on large city projects will go back to the Kingston Common Council’s Laws and Rules Committee. Lawmakers voted 4-3 Tuesday night to return the legislation amid strong pushback from local contractors who say the rule would effectively bar non-union shops from bidding the projects.

A PLA is a contract that lays out work rules and conditions, timelines and other aspects of a project. The agreements also typically require workers to be hired from local union halls. A resolution advanced by Alderman and former state Department of Transportation chief engineer Bob Dennison (D-Ward 6) would require the city to hire a consultant to conduct an analysis of all projects where labor costs are expected to exceed $1 million. If the analysis shows some financial benefit to the city from having a PLA, one will be negotiated. Supporters of PLAs claim they save money while ensuring that jobs go to local workers.

But more than a dozen local workers turned out to Tuesday’s council meeting to complain that they would be frozen out of big city jobs by the new rule. While PLAs do not explicitly ban non-union contractors from bidding projects, an open shop contractor who won such a bid would be required to leave their usual crew on the sidelines while hiring a new team of union members for the project. Similarly, non-union workers can be hired for a PLA project, but only if they pay dues to a union they do not belong to for the duration of the job.

“As soon as you put a PLA on a project you lock out the majority of contractors who would probably want to bid that project,” said Barry Keyser, one of a number of employees of Kingston-based Arold Construction who showed up to oppose the resolution. “I’m locked out, Arold is locked out, the men I work with are locked out, anyone who doesn’t have a union card is locked out.”

Brian Sampson, executive director of the Association of Builders and Contractors, which represents 450 open-shop contractors in New York, claimed that 77 percent of workers in the Hudson Valley did not belong to a union and would be frozen out of PLA projects. Sampson added that fewer bidders would likely drive up costs while taking wages and benefits from local residents.

“All across the state we see PLAs that are failing,” said Sampson. “The number of contractors bidding those projects is dropping and the cost of those projects is going up.”

This is the second effort by the city to adopt legislation that open-shop contractors claim would leave them frozen out of bidding city projects. In 2022, the Common Council imposed new requirements on an existing mandate that contractors on city jobs above $100,000 have an apprenticeship program in place. Non-union contractors complained that the requirement that those programs graduate at least three workers every five years would be impossible for them to comply with. Last year, the council overrode a veto by Mayor Steve Noble to amend the rule again to eliminate the “three graduates in five years” rule while allowing another part of the law that mandated the apprenticeship programs maintain a 30 percent graduation rate.

In a statement last week, the Association of Builders and Contractors sought to tie the new legislation to a surge in donations from local unions to the campaign of Mayor Steve Noble during his last re-election campaign, noting that Noble had entered into a PLA for the Dietz Stadium overhaul without going through the council. In a statement to Kingston Wire, Noble pushed back on the criticism saying that during his more than eight years in office he had entered into just two PLAs for the stadium project and a large reconstruction project at the city’s Cooper Lake watershed. Noble added that he supported Dennison’s plan because it “levels the playing field” for contractors while saving taxpayer money.

“New York State government, counties and cities all across [the state] utilize PLAs on a daily basis for large projects and so it is very disheartening to have this out-of-town group sling mud at the great work we are accomplishing, but clearly it shows the true character of this trade group, whom until today, I have never even heard of,” Noble wrote in response to the association’s statement.