Labor activists may end up on the losing end of their battle with the Arlington School Board over the new Arlington Career Center construction project.
But they aren’t going down without a fight.
A coalition of groups is planning a protest the evening of May 6 at the Career Center, part of a last-minute effort to convince School Board members to attempt to amend the proposed construction contract for what will be Arlington’s most expensive (and in some ways its most delayed) school project ever.
The Northern Virginia AFL-CIO, D.C. Metro Building Trades and Arlington NAACP are slated to participate in the event, which will be held three days before School Board action on the construction contract with Whiting-Turner Construction is slated to take place.
Labor advocates want the contract to include more labor-friendly provisions. If that requires re-bidding the project, they say that is the price that will have to be paid.
But at an April 25 School Board meeting, staff said going back to re-bid the project could delay the project by a year. If the contract is approved May 9, construction work will start almost immediately.
Caught in the middle, School Board members on April 25 seemed to be searching for a middle ground, finding a way to include language in the contract that might be acceptable to both the activists and Whiting-Turner. But Superintendent Francisco Durán and his staff are recommending no changes to the contract proposal that was disseminated in advance of the April 25 meeting.
The recommendation is for a $132.5 million construction contract to Whiting-Turner along with a contract of $4.8 million for construction-management services to Turner & Townsend Heery.
