Concrete workers strike affects WTC work

About 200 laborers stood down from their jobs for a second day Tuesday at the World Trade Center site, although the owner said the work stoppage had a minimal impact on the site's transit hub and signature skyscraper, and no impact on the memorial.

The Concrete Workers District Council, whose members have been without a contract since July 1, declined to comment. But some of the workers who stood or sat in a large group around a plaza agreed to discuss their concerns.

"We were willing to take a freeze but we are not going to take a 20 percent pay cut," said concrete worker Lorenzo Mineo.

He said he realized people around the country have a connection to the building formerly known as the Freedom Tower and they may want the work to go on. But, he said, "we're here in the elements risking our lives and building this building and they don't want to pay their workers."

Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman said work remained on track for the memorial to open on the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey owns the site.

Concrete work has stopped at the skyscraper, and Mineo and his colleagues estimated that by the end of the week the strike could force steelwork at the building to grind to a halt as well.

Thousands of workers around the city are members of the striking union, but the effect of the stoppage will be tempered by the fact that many individual projects have no-strike clauses, said Louis Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers' Association, which is bargaining with the strikers.

Among those buildings where work continues is another one of the office towers rising at the World Trade Center site.

Both parties were meeting Tuesday, said Coletti, who argued his group's stance was made necessary by the city's shifting economic landscape, in which developers are undertaking fewer and fewer large scale projects.

"The concrete workers need to go back to the work while we're trying to resolve this," he said. "Especially down at the World Trade Center. It's offensive."

Mineo and his colleagues said they were the lowest-paid of the trades, making $37.80 an hour.