Union Workers Protest at Rep. Frank Wolf's Press Conference

[Omaha Steve]

Run time: 00:40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trm5QQqJe8A   Posted on YouTube: April 18, 2011 By YouTube Member: washingtontimes Views on YouTube: 1055   Posted on DU: April 19, 2011 By DU Member: Omaha Steve Views on DU: 473

 


http://nation.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/19/union-protesters-disrupt-congressmans-press-conference

By Kara Clark, Leesburg Today

In what was supposed to be an afternoon press conference focused on a call to reverse plans to construct an underground Metrorail station at Dulles Airport, attention instead was turned to the more than 100 protestors who showed up at Rep. Frank Wolf’s (R-VA-10) Herndon office to make their voices heard.

With chants of “Cut Wolf’s pay,” protestors representing the Laborers’ International Union of North America objected to the congressman’s criticism of a Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority board vote to require Project Labor Agreement bids on Phase 2 of Metrorail construction to Dulles. A PLA is a type of pre-hire collective bargaining agreement that establishes the terms and conditions of employment for a specific construction project. While contract terms for the Phase 1 project had similar language, Wolf pointed out in a letter to MWAA board chairman Charles Snelling, “it was entered into voluntarily by Dulles Transit Partners and Bechtel after the contract was signed, and expressly exempted merit shop contractors from agreeing to the PLA.

“Requiring firms to agree to the use of a PLA before contracts are awarded would be a significant departure from the Phase 1 agreement,” the letter reads.

[pacalo]

1. For a person unfamiliar with union jargon, I had trouble understanding the dynamics of this

situation from reading the article. I found this website, Blue Virginia & there were some comments there that give a little more perspective:

Two points on this: 1) gotta hand it to Frank Wolf, at least he's been consistent in his dislike of tunnels, either at the airport (where we don't need one) or in Tysons Tunnel (where we badly DO need one); and 2) good for the union members protesting Wolf's constant anti-worker, pro-corporate, right-wing ideological votes on everything from health care reform to the environment to huge tax breaks to rich people to defunding Medicare to...you name it. Every time Wolf pokes his head out of his spider-hole, he deserves to be confronted with protests like these.

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Wolf Failed Us
Rail-to-Dulles remains an underfunded disaster. The biggest problem is Frank Wolf's failure to get proper federal funding. Of the projected $6.25 billion cost, only 14% comes from the Federal government. The nationwide average for Federal funding of mass-transit rail is 38%. Rail projects in Dallas and Seattle, with no federal impacts, got 42-50% federal funding. Rail-to-Dulles should have received at least that much if not more. After all, connecting our Nation's capital by rail to its international airport is in the federal interest. But Wolf only got 14% for us! If he had done his job and just obtained the nationwide average, we would have an additional $1.5 billion dollars for Rail-to-Dulles. That would pay for parking garages, an underground station at Dulles, a tunnel under Tysons, and cuts to tolls on 267. None of that will happen because Frank Wolf let us down on Rail-to-Dulles. Northern Virginia will have to make up the shortfall. We will be living with Wolf's failure for decades.

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Yes, and it's a failure in many other ways as well
What's so frustrating is that we wrote about this extensively at RK during the period when this was all being debated. We also worked closely with TysonsTunnel.org to try and get this project built the right way, not the egregiously wrong way. Unfortunately, we lost, and now our region's going to be suffering for it for decades to come. Even more galling is who we lost to: the power of wealthy/powerful Bechtel, the foolish/short-sighted politicians who railroaded (pun intended) this thing through, everyone who was bought and paid for by Bechtel, etc. I just hope that everyone who opposed TysonsTunnel.org and the others who worked hard to see this project done right are satisfied with themselves now!