Newark City, School District, and Building Contractor Accused of Violating Fair Labor Practices During School Construction

Politics in Newark is complicated but New Jersey’s largest city has this going for it: school and municipal leaders are tireless advocates for fair wages and unionized workforces.

Until they’re not.

That’s the heart of a new story from TapInto, which describes current fireworks over the construction of a new $!60 million Newark High School of Architecture and Design (NJHSAD). In a press release dated May 25th, Newark Superintendent Roger León, Mayor Ras Baraka, several Newark School Board members, and Summit Assets, the developer of the project, celebrated NJHSAD’s ground-breaking at the old site of St. James Hospital in the Ironbound section of town. During speeches the celebrants said the new school will ensure secure career paths for future graduates who will “leave the school with the skills that will make them immediately employable while also being prepared for further personal and professional advancement.” A vice persident at Summit, Melanie Campbell, sang the national anthem and told a reporter, “developing an architectural high school in the city of Newark has always been a dream of our development team.”

There are two problems here: first, a complaint filed with the New Jersey Division of Wage and Hour Compliance by a union representative at Laborers Eastern Region Organizing Fund accuses Summit Assets of using non-union workers paid way below current pay scales. This practice is a violation of state law, which requires “prevailing wages” for people hired to renovate or construct municipal and district facilities that are over 20,000 square feet; NJHSA will be 179,000 square feet.

In response, Summit Assets’s CEO Albert Nigri first told a union researcher that “the project was not subject to prevailing wage and that union rates are too high.” Then, in a separate response, Nigri said Summit wasn’t actually the developer. But, in fact, Summit Assets is the developer: Nigri attended the ground-breaking with his colleagures and, according to TapInto, the address of the future high school, 155 Jefferson St., is listed on Summit’s website as a current project.

Second, Newark leaders refuse to acknowledge that their celebration of this project conflicts in any way with their lip service to fair wages and working conditions. Instead, they’re ignoring incontrovertible evidence: TapInto spoke to three workers at the site who said “proper safety protocols were not taken on site and they were paid in cash for work at rates well below the legally mandated prevailing wage.” 

This reminds me of a dust-up three years ago when North Jersey Media Group published a big “exposé” on how New Jersey charter schools fund their facilities. According to the piece (here’s my take), which quoted widely from anti-charter folk like Education Law Center and Bruce Baker, charter school operators shortchange taxpayers and those in building trades by creating complicated arrangements for facilities. The article ignores the inconvenient truth that NJ charter school law fails to provide any facilities aid, although the journalists valiantly explain why operators are forced to resort to other (legal) options where nobody, including taxpayers, loses a dime. Yet at the time of the article’s publication, “progressive” politicians were outraged by corporate privatizers bilking money from working stiffs, Pete Seeger protest songs pealed from rooftops, and teacher union leaders shook their collective head in wonderment at Gov. Murphy’s prescience as his Education Department denied one charter school application after another.

So, given the facts of the construction of this new Newark high school, where is  Gov. Murphy on Newark’s failure to abide by laws intended to ensure fair wages? Why isn’t Roger León issuing broadsides on Newark Public Schools District’s complicity in paying non-union wages for facilities intended for student use? Why isn’t Newark Teachers Union President John Abeigon, ardent defender of organized labor, complaining about union members losing out to uncertified workers? Why isn’t Mayor Baraka on his soapbox?

All we hear isl silence: “Leon, [school district business administrator Valerie] Wilson and Nigri did not return repeated phone calls or respond to emails from TAPintoNewark. The mayor’s office declined to comment, as did school board members contacted by TAPintoNewark.”

I guess fair pay, safe working conditions, and government transparency go out the door when ambitious politicians get involved. Sure, it’s all about the kids.