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Bloody Buildings: Workers Win Safety Accord
June 4, 2008
Again, I am sitting at my hotel window looking at the City Center construction site. But, today, there are no picketers marching with signs that say, “Unsafe Work Site.”
Cranes are moving. I hear hammering and see bright flashes of welding. While I was sleeping, construction workers reached an accord with Perini Building Co. at the largest private construction project in the history of the United States, where the largest safety-related construction shutdown in the history of Las Vegas took place yesterday (according to an article in the June 4th edition of the Las Vegas Sun).
Following the death of a sixth worker in six months at MGM Mirage’s $9.2 billion “city in a city” project, workers stopped working, citing Perini Building Co. as not providing safety equipment, enforcing safety measures, and not responding to safety concerns that were being raised.
According to the Las Vegas Sun, Steve Ross, secretary-treasurer of the Southern Nevada Building Trades Council, announced at a news conference on Monday that in a meeting that morning union leaders had unanimously voted to demand that Perini agree to pay for additional safety training for workers, allow national union researchers to examine root causes of safety problems on the site, and allow union leaders full access to the work site. The strike started that morning and went on past midnight Tuesday.
Those measures were formally agreed upon on Tuesday morning, and work resumed in the dark.
According to the Las Vegas Sun, the six deaths at MGM Mirage CityCenter are among the 11 workers whom have died in construction accidents on the Las Vegas Strip in the last 18 months - more than were reported during the entire 1990s Las Vegas building boom. Nine of those workers died at projects overseen by general contracting giant Perini, including the six at CityCenter.
Let’s hope that the additional training and safety measures that workers have won for what is slated to be a LEED NC Silver complex of six towers results in a glittering example of American construction of Dubai-esque proportions.
Posted by Michael Ivanovich on June 4, 2008 | Comments (0)
