Thursday, August 9, 2012

City's Resurging, But Will Unions Help?

Regular readers of Philly.com certainly noticed the irony.

Tuesday, columnist Daniel Rubin posted an encouraging piece where Mayor Michael Nutter touted the site of numerous construction projects across the city.

The story centered on "30 major construction projects taking place now that represent more than $2.2 billion of investments in Philadelphia," as Mr. Rubin wrote. However, he touched on the speed bump on Philadelphia's race to recovery.

That'd be the city's infamous unions. More from Mr. Rubin's piece:

Kevin Gillen of Econsult Corp., an economic-research firm in town, figures that the $63 an hour that union workers here make, on average, is twice as much as their brethren get in Washington, and just $10 an hour less than the rate in New York.
He touched on the Pestronk brother project at 12th and Wood, something that fellow Inquirer columnist Inga Saffron touched on this morning. Ms. Saffron detailed a rather elaborate ruse employed by the Pestronks to sneak a crane onto their job site where they are using a mix of union and - gasp! - non-union workers.

If the city - and the region - are to sustain this momentum, there needs to be a strong truce with the labor unions. All of the construction and investment is encouraging, but long-term economic growth will only come with stability between developers and labor.

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