Building Trades and AFL-CIO rally for Safe Jobs on Workers' Memorial Day

"It is time that we treat worker's rights as serious as the right to earn profit by companies..."

“We are honoring Workers' Memorial Day,” said Justin Kelley - Painters Union District Council 11, Business Representative, and Rhode Island Building Trades Council Organizing Director - to a crowd of workers and allies outside a construction site at 55 George M Cohan Boulevard in Providence. “We're demanding safe work sites for everybody who works for a living in the State of Rhode Island, especially the open-shop construction workers who get pimped exploited, and oppressed by greedy developers who take our tax money to exploit workers in our state.

“It's time for a change. What we're going to do is we're going to show what the organizers and the reps see every day on unsafe work sites. Things like fall hazards, holes in the floor, and being in a lift without a harness. All so the boss can squeeze one extra dime of profit on the backs of workers.

“No one goes to work to die. No one goes to work to get hurt. We need a change. We want to change from the City of Providence and the State of Rhode Island. We want legislation to be passed. We didn't start by having the rights that we have on the job. We fought, we bled, and some of us died along the way to get 'em. What we're going to do now doesn't require us to die, but it requires us to stand up and be strong and be united with one another.”

Watch the video here:

The Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council leadership and members joined with the Rhode Island AFL-CIO to rally for Safe Jobs. Organizers and representatives of the 15 construction trade unions of the RI Building Trades shared their experiences - day in and day out - working to help workers who are put in unsafe working conditions by unscrupulous contractors.

More speakers:

Providence City Council President Rachel Miller: I've spent my whole life working for unions and workers' rights. It is a unique pleasure to say that I am here as the President of the Providence City Council to tell you that Providence is a union town.

That means that no workers in Providence or around the state, especially not the outstanding women and men of the Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council doing the work of constructing the housing that we desperately need. You are out there rebuilding the infrastructure that we desperately need. You are a huge part of economic growth in Rhode Island and for the future. No one should go to work and not return home safely every night. The work you do should not put your health at risk.

I want to just share my deep solidarity with all of the efforts to protect and maintain safety standards on the jobs. As Justin was saying, those standards weren't given to anyone. They were fought for - hard - by working people. That means we have to work together to maintain them so they're here for today and here for future generations. It means standing up and calling out unsafe job site conditions every time. It means standing up against wage theft and other things that put people at risk. It means standing together in solidarity for mental health and substance use issues so that we're together challenging some of those conditions. And it means ensuring that economic growth and workers' rights are two sides of the same coin. So "mourn the dead and fight for hell for the living." Those words have resonated for a hundred years since Mother Jones' time and are still true today. Solidarity forever.

Patrick Crowley, Secretary-Treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO: Just this last summer there was a job over by PPAC where a contractor was spreading dust all throughout the neighborhood. No one gave a shit. No one from the state. No one from the city wanted to come down. Do you know why? Because no one decided it was their responsibility. It was the Rhode Island Building Trades that raised the alarm and got that job shut down so they could stop poisoning the neighborhood. We're up at the State House every day fighting the pass laws to make sure that that stuff doesn't happen and I'm here to tell you one thing. If the government doesn't want to stop it, we'll shut those jobs down by taking the streets because we know that the working people - men and women like us - are the only ones who are going to make sure that working-class people have the rights that they deserve. And if they don't want to pass the laws and if they don't want to enforce them, we'll enforce them [...] and we'll do it without being nice.

We'll do it by making sure that every single rat contractor in this country knows that if they're going to poison the neighborhoods where our people live, they're going to have to put up with us. And we're not just the nice guys anymore. We're the ones going to say right to their face, "Your bullshit stops today."

This state likes to talk about how they have a housing crisis. Well, you know what the real crisis is? That the people building the housing can't afford to live in the housing they're building. That's a fundamental problem in this country. We've got too many Bezos and bozos and billionaires. That's a problem. It's not a sign of success that there are billionaires. It's a sign that this economy doesn't work for people like us. And like our brother Shawn Fain from the United Law Workers says, "If they don't want to do the right thing, we'll just take them out." Because we don't need more billionaires. We need more working-class people.

Justin Kelley: I want to recognize something. I've been working since I was 15 years old on and off, right? I finished school - I did all that good business - but I've been working and I worked open shop, non-union, construction - residential and commercial - for a good 10 to 15 years before I got into the painters union. Show of hands, who here worked non-union before you were in your union? We know what it's like to have a boss breathing down your neck with no representation, without a collective bargaining agreement, without an organization to have your back. We know what it's like to be put in unsafe conditions and not have a way to get it fixed.

Heiny Maldonado, a Community Organizer with Fuerza Laboral: We're here to support you today because many people in our immigrant community are working unsafe jobs and have a high rate of death and injury in these jobs. For many of these bosses, our community is [disposable] and they treat us like throwaways. They know what the safety risks are, they know what the health risks are, but they don't share them with us. They have us working with contaminated materials. They have us working in dangerous environments

So while these bosses are making millions and every day we see more construction happening, our workers' lives are being devalued for them, we're worth nothing.

Justin Kelley: At the end of the day, we need people who can get out there to shut down unsafe work when there is a clear and present danger on a job site. A man from OSHA told me straight up, "Hey Justin, we're not first responders." And I said, "I know. I'm painfully fucking aware you're not a first responder because you don't come when I see a man's life at risk. You don't make it down there."

We need the City of Providence and the State of Rhode Island to give the power to shut down unsafe work sites to inspectors.

55 George M Cohan Boulevard in Providence

Steve Ahlquist: Can you tell me why this location was chosen for the protest?

Justin Kelley: The reason why we picked this site was that this general contractor, Haynes Construction, has a long track record of unsafe work and hiring unscrupulous subcontractors. If you look them up you'll see that there's a variety of people who have had complaints about not being paid.

Also, this project has public money in it, once again with no labor standards. There are good actors involved - LISC, the Providence Housing Authority, and other well-intentioned people. But because of the way things are structured, basically a post-Faircloth Amendment, there's no labor standard attached to this public money. This job is completely open shop. If the workers feel they are in unsafe conditions they have very little to no recourse to get it corrected.

Furthermore, some of the subcontractors working here are not good actors. J.S. Interiors is the contractor we picketed in 2018 at the corner of Smith and Canal Street. That guy still, as I understand, owes money to the Department of Labor and Training for misclassifying his workers - and they shouldn't be here. If you look up Olympic Painting and Roofing - he has federal charges, that he pled guilty to, for ripping off workers. Do you know how hard it is to get federal charges to stick to you for ripping off workers? That's how egregious that guy is.

That's why we picked this site and we're going to continue to use all legal and honorable means to pressure this job site and organize the workers here.