Labor leader claims 50 Hudson Yards is behind schedule

LaBarbera says construction of a tower’s foundation is dragging on, but developer disputes that

Daniel Geiger and Joe Anuta

Hudson Yards via Related

The head honcho of the city's 100,000-member unionized construction industry said the developer of Hudson Yards, the city's biggest private construction project, is falling behind on a part of the megadevelopment it is building with some nonunion labor.

Gary LaBarbera, who heads the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, claimed the Related Cos. is behind schedule on 50 Hudson Yards, a roughly 1,000-foot-tall, $4 billion office tower the developer has started on 10th Avenue between West 33rd and West 34th streets.

"They can argue everything is going great, but we know it's not going great," LaBarbera said. "They have had some concrete blowouts where they had to replace walls because they imploded or cracked. That foundation should have been done in six or seven months, and they're not even close."

Related countered that 90% of the foundation at 50 Hudson Yards is complete, that below-grade portions are actually ahead of schedule and that all work has passed muster with contractors and third-party inspectors. Overall, the developer said, 50 Hudson Yards remains on schedule for a 2022 delivery.

"These latest 'fake news' assertions are not only patently false but desperate and sad," a Related spokeswoman said in a statement. "No amount of malicious name-calling or defamatory statements will change the fact that Gary LaBarbera and the BCTC have failed to live up to their commitments."

As union workers finish the first phase of the $20 billion, mixed-use Hudson Yards project, LaBarbera has taken the position that his member unions should not partake in the second half of the development if it involves nonunion construction workers. Related filed a $100 million lawsuit against LaBarbera's group—and him personally—this year in a bid to break organized labor's grip on the project, which had been exclusively constructed by union labor.

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Related has stated that the unions did not deliver the cost savings they promised on the first phase of the development, so it wants leeway to use union workers for some jobs—such as operating high-rise crane equipment—and cheaper, nonunion workers for simpler tasks.

That "open shop" or "merit shop" model has become common in private development across the city, particularly residential construction jobs. But with billions of dollars in wages on the line, LaBarbera has resisted it at Hudson Yards in an effort to preserve union labor's bargaining power at the site.

"Open shop is an erosion for us," LaBarbera said. "At first Related says that 90% of a building's construction staff will be union, then it will be 70%, then 50%. What's the big deal? That's the big deal."

Over the summer, the carpenters union struck an agreement to work with Related on 50 Hudson Yards, breaking rank with its peers in a defection from LaBarbera's umbrella group. Related trumpeted the defection as the beginning of the end of LaBarbera's power.

LaBarbera insisted, however, that none of the remaining trades will follow suit.

"The trades are very much united," he said. "All of the union leadership recognizes what this has become, and everyone is invested in the right outcome."

If Related can't entice other unions to break rank, it might be forced to capitulate to tap the unions' most-skilled workers, who can't easily be replaced with nonunion counterparts.

LaBarbera said it was difficult to imagine a reconciliation. After the suit against LaBarbera was filed, union labor hit back by protesting Related Chairman Steve Ross' involvement in an NFL social justice committee. Ross owns the Miami Dolphins.

The battle has been closely watched in the construction industry and has been described as one of the most bitter rifts between organized labor and a developer in recent memory.

"Targeting me personally was absolutely outside the normal parameters of a labor dispute," LaBarbera said. "They have made this personal.

"Related hasn't come to the conclusion they're in a place where a settlement is appropriate, and until that time there won't be a settlement. All I can say is that absent a settlement, our campaign will only grow."

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