Labor groups demand Turner Construction be fired over illegal workers
The Peyton Administration is considering if Turner Construction Company breached its contract by using illegal workers to build the Duval County Courthouse. Meanwhile, local unions and trades people demand the city fire Turner from the $350-million job and hire another company with a promise to use local labor.
Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton’s chief of staff Alan Mosley sent a letter Monday to the city’s General Counsel Rick Mullaney asking his office to review the arrests of illegal workers at the courthouse and to determine if the company’s breached its contract.
There have been 19 illegal workers arrested at or near the site since September. The city required all 240 employees provide additional documentation of their work status beginning three weeks ago, but federal checks showed that 100 of them gave false information.
Mosely also sent a letter to Turner Construction on Monday ordering the company to meet with each of its subcontractors by Friday, Nov. 13, to guarantee every worker on the construction site is properly documented. Mosely told Turner it will be provided the names of 100 employees who gave false information on city forms and instructed Turner to immediately revoke their employee badges.
At the Jacksonville City Council meeting Tuesday night, about six speakers from Jobs for Jacksonville, a coalition of area construction trades, called on the city to break the contract. Several decried the hiring of illegal workers when the city is suffering from double-digit unemployment. “We’re talking about people’s livelihoods here. A hundred people in Jacksonville could have been employed in some of these positions,” said Doug Williams.
— Susan Eastman
Tags: labor
November 15th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
How is it even possible that this project is being allowed to continue when they are not using 100% local labor? There is a labor union for every trade in Jacksonville and their unemployment numbers are staggering. I honestly cant believe that their is not a 24 hour picket line around that courthouse. Although it is Jacksonville and the labor movement in the south often resembles a turtle on its back, kicking and clawing but never able to get right and start moving.
November 22nd, 2009 at 9:07 pm
PianoTrade…
[...] Good piano performance. Thanks heaps for this!… if anyone else has anything it would be much appreciated. Great website http://www.en.Grand-Pianos.org Enjoy!…
January 28th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Food for thought.
March 11th, 2010 at 12:19 am
Hi there. I just noticed that your site seems to be like it has a few code faults in the bottom of this site’s page. I am not sure if anyone is having this similar bugginess when searching in your website? I’m using an entirely different browser than many people, referred to as Opera, so that is what can be causing it? I just wanted to make sure you understand. Many thanks for posting some of good postings and I will try to return again with a different web browser to check things out.