Allentown City Council waits to vote on controversial pro-union contractor law

Allentown City Council has decided to hold a special committee meeting later this month on a controversial ordinance that would create stricter requirements for city construction contractors.

At Wednesday night’s meeting, council voted to hold the special meeting March 31. Although council did not vote on the ordinance, several people spoke during public comment urging council members to reject it.

The ordinance narrowly passed last month in a 4-3 vote, but it did not become law because Mayor Matt Tuerk did not sign it. The controversial part of the ordinance requires contractors to have an apprenticeship program in place for employees for at least five years. At the meeting last month, dozens of people flooded the meeting to speak in favor or against the ordinance.

Supporters say the ordinance would create better working conditions and foster workforce development in Allentown. Critics

said it unfairly favors union contractors — most unionized contractors have the required apprenticeship program, but only some non-union shops do — and would increase costs for the city. Council members Cynthia Mota, Candida Affa and Daryl Hendricks voted against it.

Tuerk sent a memo to council after the ordinance passed that said while he was “broadly supportive of legislation that would improve quality of life for our workers,” his concerns about the ordinance “make it impossible” for him to sign the bill.

He told the bill’s sponsors, Joshua Siegel and Ed Zucal, that they must amend the ordinance to remove erroneous references to Lehigh County — the ordinance lifted language directly from a similar ordinance Lehigh County passed in 2020 — and exempt independent city authorities like the parking authority and the housing authority from the new requirements.

The amended ordinance on Wednesday’s agenda includes the changes that Tuerk requested. It also increased the minimum cost of a construction project for which the new requirements apply from $100,000 to $200,000.

Zucal said the minimum cost was amended to “make the playing field a little larger” for contractors bidding on city projects. He added that council might consider additional amendments to the ordinance in the future.

Those amendments were not enough to appease several members of the public who came to Wednesday’s meeting to urge council to reject the ordinance.

Dennis Campbell with Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade organization representing non-union construction shops, said the other provisions of the ordinance — which requires contractors to have no wage or labor violations and to have not defaulted on any projects for the past three years — preclude the need for an apprenticeship program. Non-union contractors do just as high quality work as union contractors with apprenticeship programs, he said, and urged council to include ABC representatives in their negotiations.

“It’s just not necessary, it’s leading us out,” Campbell said.

Terry Crouthamel, a managing member of Asphalt Maintenance Solutions, a road maintenance company in Emmaus, said council was unfairly excluding his company from contract work with the city. City council had just earlier in the meeting approved a $1.8 million contract to buy materials from Asphalt Maintenance and several other companies.

“You guys all voted unanimously to award a contract to us, but if you decide to pass this [ordinance], there’s the potential I won’t be able to do business with you again,” Crouthamel said. “Just because we don’t have an apprenticeship program, it doesn’t mean were not a good contractor.”

After the special meeting March 31, council could give the ordinance a final vote April 6.