Union: Locals missed out on P&G work
LIMA ' Work Procter & Gamble awarded to a Wisconsin company for its new warehouse could have been given to a company that would have used local workers, union officials said Friday.
Earlier this week, P&G announced its contractor for a rack system in its new automated warehouse was hiring as a subcontractor Reich Installation Services Inc., a company under investigation by the federal government for having illegal immigrants as employees.
P&G said it investigated the company and received assurances that illegal workers would not be used at the job site.
Giving Reich the job was a missed opportunity, said Steve Wilson, a local representative of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters.
Wilson had spent three months working with a Chicago company bidding on the work Reich received. Conveyor Specialists Inc. had pledged to bring only two managers from Chicago to Lima and hire all local people for the work, Wilson said.
'This isn't a union-nonunion issue,' Wilson said. 'This is a local jobs for local people issue. Some of the people who would have been hired for that job wouldn't have been union mem-bers. We could have put a lot of people to work for a year. I just thought the community should know.'
Procter & Gamble is building a $100 million warehouse and distribution center about a mile east of its plant on Reservoir Road. It will begin operating in January 2007 and continue to open in phases through 2007.
Tuesday, Procter & Gamble officials said about 45 percent of the value of the project will be awarded to local contractors, which P&G defines as being within a 60-mile radius. Other con-tractors, while not based locally, are using local employees. The contractor, Nedcon, that hired Reich is based in the Netherlands.
P&G has said it knew its decision would be controversial, but the company allowed Reich to be hired because of the company's experience with Nedcon, and its bid.
Wilson said Conveyor was given three chances to bid on the project, and the Reich's bid came in 'seven figures' lower than Conveyor's.
'I just don't know how that's even possible, bringing 50 or 60 people here from Wisconsin and they're cheaper than a company that would use people who live here,' Wilson said.
News reports about Reich's employees being arrested at three jobs sites in the past six months have said Reich consistently underbids competitors by 30 percent.
While working with Conveyor, Wilson found the Reich arrests online, went to P&G with the information and was told the company already knew.
'I told them I wouldn't do anything with the information until I heard from them. That was two weeks ago. I wanted to give them the opportunity to do the right thing,' Wilson said. 'Then I was called there on Tuesday to be told in person they were going with Reich.'
Wilson said he's not making an illegal immigrant issue, or a union issue and isn't trying to bash P&G, because he said it's a good company.
'I just think they could do more,' he said.
Job interview
|
