Ground Zero Reconstruction Grinds to a Halt Due to Strike

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The New York Sun

A walkout by heavy equipment operators over the holiday weekend expanded to more than 1,000 city construction sites yesterday, indefinitely suspending work on major projects including the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site.

“All major work sites are shut down,” the managing director of the General Contractors Association of Greater New York, Chris Ward, said.

The association’s contract with the International Union of Operating Engineers expired at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, initially shutting down work at about 100 sites, including the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower being built to replace the trade center.

By yesterday, the shutdown affect ed more than 1,000 sites that employ the 3,200 crane operators and workers who operate backhoes, drilling rigs, and compressors. Other projects include a $2.2 billion transit hub being built at ground zero, a new Goldman Sachs Group Inc. headquarters, and a new city water tunnel.

Mayor Bloomberg has “reached out to both sides and invited them to use Gracie Mansion” for negotiations, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, Stuart Loeser, said last night. He declined to say if the parties involved had responded to the invitation.

Mr. Ward said earlier in the day that no new talks had been scheduled. Union officials didn’t return telephone calls.

Work on the Freedom Tower’s foundation was suspended for a third day yesterday, although workers were continuing to relocate utility lines elsewhere on the site, officials said. “We are hopeful of a swift resolution so that work can resume as soon as possible at the Freedom Tower and other projects affected in the city,” a spokesman for Tishman Construction Corp., Howard Rubenstein, said.

Talks broke down with the union on Thursday. The workers, who earn between $73 and $82 an hour, rejected a contract offering 6% raises for each of the next five years, in exchange for agreements to be retrained to take on additional job responsibilities.

The union last week had said it would offer to work under interim agreements with some contractors, including the trade center site. Mr. Ward said, “it’s been recognized that there are public projects throughout the city that are all of vital importance.”


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