Would you pay $30 to $40 or more to an employee who pushes a broom or dumps bricks into a dumpster? What if you were made to do so? That is the labor issue that BSC Group's Bashar Issa is facing at this moment.
Months ago I spoke with Bashar who told me that he was worried that his workers would unionize. This past Saturday he told me that Local 210 had finally succeeded in luring his unskilled workers to vote union. And if you think about it, who wouldn't vote union if promised a ridiculous amount of money to conduct menial work routines? But what these unionized workers may not know is that unions such as 210 can be very effective when it comes to running a developer out of town. Yup... no developer means no work in the future for the workers.
Is Bashar leaving town? No. He's going to finish the Statler Hotel (at a price that would likely cost what he anticipated), and when asked about the Buffalo City Tower? Well, he doesn't think that he can pull it off if his workers are unionized. That's a sad thought for Bashar, but at the same time he knows that there are plenty of other opportunities around the world that will keep him (and his money) busy.
The BSC Group is employing many laborers who have not had steady jobs in construction before. Bashar feels that he has been fair all along and is visibly upset that it has come down to this. So where does the BSC Group go from here? There are going to be long drawn-out negotiations that are going to be costly and time-consuming. One would think that those days were long gone.