Red State says it’s true. DNC leaders are discriminating against local firms in favor of out-of-town unionized ones — and requesting that those from Charlotte that do apply unionize if they want to bid on jobs.
The charges come from John Monteith, owner of Heritage Printing & Graphics, who says he was told he couldn’t compete for the job because he isn’t unionized.
After continually receiving no return phone calls from the people that would review bids and determine vendors, John started working harder to land the business. Donuts that he would send to their offices would be eaten, thank you’s would be said, but still no follow ups. No call backs. No business.
Finally, confused and bewildered, John reached out to someone he knew that might be able to help. He was so shocked and upset at what he was told by this person, that he felt he had to tell the story. I spoke with him today.
The person that John spoke to is an executive on the Charlotte in 2012 Host Committee who are central to the planning of the convention and how things will operate in Charlotte. There are only a handful of executive members of this committee, but John refrained from naming anyone specific. Ultimately, which one it is may not matter. What does matter is how the conversation went. According to John, he approached this person to see why he couldn’t get any traction with the committee.
They responded by asking him, “John, are you a union shop?” When John told him he was not, the Committee member told him, “We were just told that we cannot accept bids unless they are from companies that are unionized.”
“Cannot? Or will not?,” John asked. ”Cannot,” was the response he got.
Monteith wasn’t interested initially in rocking the boat by telling his story … until Anthony Foxx, the mayor, started bragging about all the local jobs the DNC was bringing to the Queen City.
There is some public evidence of what Monteith is talking about. Take the $7 million in contracts awarded to overhaul Time Warner Arena.
Convention CEO Steve Kerrigan said the contracts also would “maximize union labor.” But he declined to say to what extent union workers are expected to participate, the Charlotte Observer reported.
So no one knows who unionized to get the contracts, and no one will. Contractors aren’t allowed to discuss their work on the DNC convention without express written permission from the DNC, which is awfully convenient.
So far, the Observer reports that two of three big contracts for work on the convention center have gone to out-of-town firms with local “partners.”
But it was actually three of three since all three contracts actually went to partnership groups with one Charlotte contractor and the rest of the contractors from out of town. Not disclosed is what percentage of the work the “local partners” are doing, and whether their partnership is just varnish for show. One of the three local contractors, Neighboring Concepts, is owned by Democrat African-American former county commissioner Darrel Williams, and meets the minority owned business requirements that are apparently just as important to the DNC as the union representation.
No doubt they’ll drudge up a contract for some local nonunion biz now that these accusations are hanging out there. But if what Monteith says is true, the idea that the DNC will bring national dollars to struggling Charlotte businesses — and enough local dollars to justify the losses of those businesses in uptown that will likely have to shut down for a week — is a sham.