NEW YORK CITY-The Regional Plan Association held a conference and panel discussion today on union construction in the city and an RPA report, released in the spring, that is critical of current practices in the industry.

The report, “Construction Labor Costs in New York City: A Moment of Opportunity,” charts the rising cost of construction union labor in the city, which, it asserts, is rendering union work noncompetitive with non-union work, which now takes roughly 40% of projects in New York’s construction market.

“New York’s high-end, high-rise residential and commercial construction has always been built union,” Hope Cohen, associate director of the RPA’s Center for Urban Innovation told attendees, “but a revolution is underway. It started in Brooklyn and it has crossed the river into Manhattan.”

The reasons for the move to non-union work, outlined in the report, are numerous but at the end of the day seem to boil down to one--union work in the city is cost-prohibitive for developers.

Cohen, who co-authored the report with Julia Vitullo-Martin, director of the Center for Urban Innovation, then introduced the panel for a discussion of the rising costs, and what to do about them.

Donald Capoccia, managing principal and founder of BFC Partners, has used both types of labor--for example, on the Toren, a 240 unit residential tower in downtown Brooklyn. “When we got to Toren, we ran into an issue and, at the 8^th floor we had to make a change,” Capoccia said. “We had to excuse the union workers from the job--and at that point it was probably 200-250 union jobs that were lost on that job. It was simply because of an intractable union that was unwilling to take a baby step with us and see how it worked out.” He added that “this is an issue that’s not going to go away,” in particular with regard to affordable housing work.

“We’re here today to talk about the cost of construction,” Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said. “Why does a union job cost 30% more than a non-union job?” Spinola addressed standby workers on sites, and non-productive workers in general, an issue REBNY has studied on the WTC site with relation to several unions--Local 14 and Local 15. “Over a three year period, the estimate is that there is $100 million that will be spent on non-productive work--in effect, workers, who if it were up to the contractor would not be there.” He added that the only way to cut down on the cost of a construction job was to put the control back in the hands of the contractor and the owner.

Not everyone on the panel agreed, however, and the discussion was heated at times.

“Our industry is misunderstood and generally maligned,” said Robert Ledwith, business manager and financial secretary-treasurer of the Metallic Lathers and Reinforcing Ironworkers Local 46. He said that he saw the RPA report as part of “a war on working people.” With regard to work rules, Ledwith focused on conditions workers must endure, like extreme heat and lack of paid sick days or vacation. “We don’t get paid when we don’t work,” he said.

Reached later, Cohen tells GlobeSt.com that she was somewhat surprised by the reaction to the RPA study, but that her “hope is not lost in all of this heat about the role of unions in the American scene. In our perspective we were trying to identify a path forward for construction unions.”