The Carpenters and the Board

SOMERVILLE — At 7:03 p.m. on a recent Thursday at Somerville City Hall, a dozen union carpenters filed into the back of the Aldermanic Chambers just after the Pledge of Allegiance and the aldermen’s opening prayer “to defend and advance” the God-given rights of all people. Only a few of the carpenters were wearing winter coats, despite the snow falling steadily — in curtains, like fat, fancy, unhurried rain — outside. The men, members of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, had come to oppose agenda item number 69.

Item 69 is a request from Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone for a home rule petition that, if passed, would allow a Somerville Housing Authority development project to waive certain state laws governing construction on public property.

Bert Durand, communications director for the New England Regional Council of Carpenters (NERCC), told a reporter that the developers are seeking an exemption from filing certified payroll records.

“They’re looking for an exemption from certified payroll,” Durand said, “which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense unless you think you’re probably going to try and fudge the prevailing wage and you don’t want to get caught.” The developers have not requested a prevailing wage exemption, he said.

Massachusetts’ prevailing wage law sets pay levels for trades workers on taxpayer-funded projects. That law, Durand says, is designed to protect against contractors winning construction bids “by just trashing wages.”

“Certified payroll records are usually filed on prevailing wage jobs,” he said.

Durand explained that certified payroll is meant to provide “a paper trail. It’s a report certifying that you followed the law. So the fact that they want to be exempted from that is reason for concern.”

A one-page letter, which a union organizer pressed into the hand of an earnest young blonde woman in a black puffy vest at the Board of Aldermen meeting, requested “Please do not support the Home Rule petition.” This, it turned out, was a copy of a letter sent by the NERCC to the board on February 9.

The construction project in question is the Clarendon Hill Public Housing Project, a five-acre site owned by the Somerville Housing Authority on the northwestern tip of the city. Clarendon Hill was built 70 years ago for returning World War II veterans and is now, in the Housing Authority’s estimation, beyond repair. The Housing Authority’s new plan will raze and rebuild all the original 216 low-income units, add 50 so-called “workers” mid-price units, and also build 250 market-rate apartments.

In May 2016, the Housing Authority selected a joint bid from the Preservation of Affordable Housing, the Somerville Community Corporation, and the Boston-based real estate investment firm, Redgate. Redgate will develop the profit-driven new market-rate units.

The carpenters object not only to the mayor’s request to waive state reporting requirements, but also to Redgate’s hiring practices. Redgate did not respond to our request for comment.

The NERCC also believes that Redgate may be underreporting projected profits. “We don’t think Redgate is being completely transparent with the folks of Somerville,” Durand said. The union is calling for the aldermen to retain an independent financial analyst for the project.

Alderman Mark Niedergang explained that a vote on the home rule petition is the only way the board can influence the Clarendon project at this stage.

“Apparently, the project conflicts with some existing laws about development on public property,” he said. Niedergang is also the chair of the Legislative Matters Committee. “In order for it to move forward, the city needs to petition the state legislature to basically waive those provisions. And that’s what our decision point is. . . . As far as I know, the only influence or leverage we have on this project is whether or not we agree to submit this home rule petition.”

On Thursday, February 22, the decision point never came. Item 69 was addressed second by the board, and referred without discussion to Legislative Matters — Niedergang’s committee.

“There are no votes being taken tonight. The discussion will probably start happening in a month’s time,” Board President Katjana Ballantyne told the audience. She represents Ward 7, where Clarendon Hill is located.

At 7:10 p.m., as silently as they’d arrived seven minutes earlier, the men in work pants, yellow sweatshirts, and beanies, filed back out again. Their departure shifted the ratio of businesswear-to-workwear markedly in favor of the jacket and tie, the traditional uniform of the boss and the bourgeois. On the back wall, portraits of former Somerville mayors looked down on a crowd reduced to four.

Out in the hall, 61-year-old John Fitzpatrick stood aside while a union organizer in a Red Sox cap briefed the main group.

“They buried it in the board. They just kind of buried it,” Fitzpatrick told a reporter. “That’s kind of like, put it on the back burner. They don’t want you knowing what’s going on. It happens all the time.”

Fitzpatrick has blue eyes and a smooth, bald head. He has been a union carpenter for 32 years. He has lived in the city all his life, and his Somerville accent is so thick that one journalist jotted down “cabinets union,” before being corrected. “Cahpenters union. . . . They’re all union cahpenters, these guys, every one of them.”

Grassroots organizing and turning out local carpenters for hometown politics is an important part of the NERCC’s approach across the six northeastern states where it operates. The union represents 20,000 carpenters, pile drivers, shop and millmen, and floorcoverers from Connecticut to Maine. Durand estimates that there are some 60 union carpenters living in Somerville.

Some of the organizers present on Thursday, however, were from elsewhere. Noel Xavier, who is taller than Fitzpatrick and was unshaven in a puffy coat, comes from Portugal. He carefully pronounced his name ex-zavier for American journalists.

Durand, who believes that the union’s mission includes policing the industry and raising awareness before problems develop on work sites, explained that “part of the reason that we’re concerned about this in Somerville is we’ve seen some of this stuff happen in Somerville already with some of the development that’s already gone on there.”

Both Xavier and Fitzpatrick also saw the Clarendon debate as part of a troubling trend. As the city faces extensive development on private as well as public projects, it’s no longer just a question of union or non-union labor, but of local versus outsider. Cheap itinerant labor — in some cases by foreign workers — is being used by contractors on big projects in Somerville, they claim.

“We have Somerville residents — carpenters — that could be working these jobs,” Xavier explained. “They pay taxes in Somerville. And you have these contractors that come in, bringing people from out of state to do the work, getting paid cash on the jobs. These people aren’t contributing to the city at all.”

“They’re talking within the next eight years — just in Somerville alone — four billion dollars’ worth of work,” Fitzpatrick said. “The company doing Union Square, they’re from Chicago. The company that’s doing the T, they’re from Texas. . . . Why? There’s no subways in Texas.”