Could Unions Break New York’s Housing Impasse?

As rents, home prices, and homelessness climbed to record highs across New York, lawmakers failed to pass any major housing legislation before leaving Albany for the year. One reason for that: a lack of support from unions, and a lack of effort to secure it.

Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature plan to double the pace of new housing statewide had the potential to create jobs for workers who build and maintain homes. But their unions wanted to ensure those jobs would be well paid and that non-union labor couldn’t underbid them. When Hochul didn’t include major provisions along these lines, she forfeited the building unions’ support, labor officials told New York Focus.

The stakes are high for the 200,000 workers who make up the New York State Building and Construction Trades Council, a coalition of construction worker unions, as the industry increasingly turns to non-union workers.

“Unions are fighting for their lives because their residential market share has been so decimated,” a union official said. “People are focusing on making sure the playing field is fair, because when that happens unions are going to win jobs and people are going to join unions.”

Nationwide, union activity is surging, with workers striking in industries from film to automobiles. It’s had a significant role in shaping housing policy, too: In California, union support was a decisive factor in passing several major recent laws boosting housing supply — many of which included wage standards and other labor protections.

Hochul’s plan, which aimed to add 800,000 new homes in the state over the next decade, would have most impacted the suburbs and outer boroughs of New York City and was intensely opposed by local politicians there. That made the absence of other sources of support more damaging.

“It was always going to be controversial to people who live there. One way to get around that is getting the support of people who are going to work there. She did neither,” said Samuel Stein, housing policy analyst at the nonprofit Community Service Society.

Before Hochul unveiled the housing plan in January, the union official said, her team informed some unions of the plan — but didn’t ask for feedback.

“It was more of a briefing, not asking, ‘What do you think and how do we make this better?’” they said.

As the legislative session picked up steam, there was no major constituency pushing for the plan. Several unions called on the Governor to negotiate with them on their priorities, such as workplace protections and wage guarantees.

Another influential player in these debates is the Real Estate Board of New York, the trade association for developers in New York City — and a group known to have the governor’s ear. The group is open to discussing wage guarantees for building maintenance workers like superintendents and doormen, but more cautious about extending the same to construction workers, REBNY president Jim Whelan told New York Focus.

The powerful union Local 32BJ, a branch of the SEIU that represents building maintenance workers, opposed a key provision of Hochul’s plan: allowing developers to bypass local zoning if towns don’t build enough new housing to meet state-set targets.

That could have removed a significant source of leverage for unions to strike deals with developers, since unions can often convince local legislators to reject a zoning change if a developer doesn’t meet their demands.

“There’s a series of, you could call them concessions … in terms of labor standards and affordability levels,” 32BJ President Manny Pastreich said of New York City’s zoning process. “From our point of view, it usually ends up in a better place than it started.”

32BJ and other unions wanted Hochul to require developers that bypassed local zoning to offer union-level wages and benefits. A similar provision in California secured union support for laws simplifying the state’s stringent environmental review process, which can delay new housing for years. Despite some discussion, Hochul’s team didn’t include any such measure.

Wage guarantees could make some developments financially impossible, said Noah Kazis, professor at the University of Michigan Law School and an expert on New York zoning. But Kazis suggested there could be a compromise in which the guarantees apply only to projects in high-value locations, or above a certain size. “It is a good thing not to solve our housing crisis on the backs of construction workers,” he said.

Other powerful unions such as the 40,000-member Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, which represents hospitality workers, liked Hochul’s plan in concept, but didn’t publicly support or lobby on it.

“We need bold provisions to spur new housing, and we also believe we need tenant protections to make sure housing stays affordable,” said a spokesperson for the union.

Multiple union officials told New York Focus that the governor’s team didn’t consult them about the plan after its release or offer incentives to support it.

One union official said that they didn’t think Hochul had offered to meet any of labor’s major demands, since it was never mentioned at a meeting of the building trades council, which often negotiates on behalf of the major construction unions.

“Nothing was proposed that was even worth bringing up,” the official said.

Gary LaBarbera, president of the council, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Since it didn’t seem like Hochul’s plan was likely to become law, it wasn’t a major lobbying focus. “It was such a non-live issue that I didn’t waste my time,” the union official said. “If there was momentum around it, we would have been advocating hard” to include measures like wage guarantees.

Hochul has continued to stress the need for new homes since the legislative session ended in June. In July, she issued an executive order that offered grants to municipalities that prioritize building housing and extended a tax break for upcoming apartment buildings in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn.