Union to keep banner up until Residences are sold out

A labor union plans to continue its protest of a Residences at Little Nell subcontractor until all of the units in the high-end fractional project are sold, a union representative said recently.

It has been almost a year since the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America set up a large banner at the edge of Aspen’s gondola plaza reading, “Shame on Residences at the Little Nell,” and referring to a union Web site, www.StopWorkerAbuse.org [1].

The union is actually protesting the hiring and wage practices of Spacecon Specialty Contractors, a subcontractor based in Colorado Springs which is responsible for the drywall and metal studs used in the construction. The union claims Spacecon does not pay area standard wages and often uses labor contractors who are prone to mistreat workers and use illegal labor in addition to underpaying them and not offering them benefits. Aspen is one of five locations in Colorado where the union is protesting Spacecon.

Officials at Spacecon and Swinerton, the general contractor on the Residences, have denied the union’s accusations.

“We’re going to be there for the foreseeable future,” said Dave Wilson, a carpenter’s union spokesman based in Kansas City whose office covers the district that includes Aspen. “The public needs to know what happened there until they sell all the units. And it’s not just [the project] in Aspen.”

Spacecon has apparently severed its ties with Leno and Company, a Texas labor broker that was named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit alleging human trafficking. According to Wilson, Leno had been paying Spacecon workers on the Residences project less than they were promised, crowding them into hotel rooms and charging them more than the actual hotel rate.

Despite resolving those concerns, there are still lingering issues with Spacecon, said Wilson. The company is still not paying “area standard wages” — base pay should be $18.27, according to the union — and while it’s offering its employees health insurance, it’s an expensive add-on that few can afford.

And now, workers “are being asked to produce unrealistic amounts of work,” said Wilson, because there are fewer workers. “The contractors bid those jobs intending to use Leno and Company or some other labor broker to slash labor costs, and now they’re getting pressure to stop using the labor brokers, but they still have those contracts in place.”

A call to a Swinerton spokesman, who in past articles also represented Spacecon, was not returned on Monday.

All but a handful of the 208 shares in the 26 luxury fractional units at the Residences at Little Nell have been pre-sold, with closings expected imminently. The final few sales, however, might take a while given the state of the economy, and several buyers have filed suit to get out of the pending sales claiming the developers breach their contracts.

Asked why the Residences at Little Nell is targeted in the banner when the union’s beef is with a subcontractor, Wilson replied that the developer had the opportunity to make a managerial decision not to use Spacecon, and, “as far as we’re concerned shame on them for not exercising that managerial decision.”

The union apparently won a battle in Denver when the management of a Hyatt convention center hotel project decided against using Spacecon. But according to Wilson, Spacecon is still using cash workers at another Denver job.

Wilson also said the labor broker issue has drawn considerable attention, both from authorities and from the media. An independent documentary producer is working on a TV show about it for public television, and a film crew from a Spanish language network has been in Aspen working on a separate TV show, according to Wilson.

And the union has gotten “a lot” of phone calls, although Wilson said he doesn’t keep track of which calls specifically reference the Aspen project. Union representatives give out a brochure with the same toll-free number at all of their Colorado protest sites.

Three or four people hired by the union man the banner facing Durant Ave., arguably one of the most visible spots in town. The banner is not put up every day, but depends on things like the weather and worker availability. Most of the people manning the banner are out-of-work union members or family members, and most are local, said Wilson, who admitted that in the year the banner has been up, attention to the protesters “has kind of tapered off some.”