Union Members - Careers Articles - Urine Bottles - Philly Union Battle Gets Ugly

When young brothers Matthew and Michael Pestronk decided to become apartment developers in Philadelphia, they didn't expect to find bottles of urine littering their construction sites, or asbestos planted in the walls, or posters put up there of Mike's dead dog or of his wife with a penis superimposed on her face.

But that's reportedly been happening at their development project, after they decided to use mostly non-union labor. Some say that the city's unions haven't stretched their muscle this much in 25 years.

Thirtyfive-year-old Matthew and 31-year-old Michael have already developed five apartment buildings in the city, with little noise from Philly unions.

But their new projects, a 163-unit apartment building, where the vacant and decaying Goldtex textile factory once stood, and a massive renovation of a 300-unit-plus building in the historic Germantown neighborhood are, at $38 million and $52 million respectively, massive endeavors in Philly proper, a long-protected union turf.

They're also funded entirely by private money, so there's no legal obligation to hire union members at all.

Greed Or Good Sense?

For several months, union members have been picketing outside the Goldtex site, holding banners with slogans like "The Pestronks Are the 1 Percent. They Are Killing Our Communities" and "Post Brothers Exploits Minority Workers." The Pestronks claim that union members have tried to intimidate and threaten them, and they received a temporary injunction to keep protesters away.

Union members counter that the Pestronks have been the ones threatening them. "They hired thugs to be their bodyguards to attempt to intimidate me," said Patrick Gallespie, who heads the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council. "And I'm a 57-year-old man."

"That's laughable," says Mike Pestronk, in response to the allegation. "We would have to have a death wish and we'll leave it at that."

The Pestronks say they're not doing anything unfair. They want to hire the best workers at the best price, and offered 40 percent of the jobs to the unions. But the unions allegedly refused to let any of their workers take the jobs unless the Pestronks agreed to go union, 100 percent.

The developers have set up a website, PhillyBully.com , to make their case. The hourly billing rate of the Philadelphia Carpenters Union is $63, they say, way above the market rate. They claim to pay their workers in the $35- to $45-an-hour range, which is still higher than the hourly union rate in the more expensive city of Washington, D.C.

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