A Union Giveaway

Mayor Mayor de Blasio and the City Council are rushing to pass a “construction safety” bill that in fact is just a gift to the building-trades unions.

Organized labor is down to just 2 percent of local new-building-construction jobs. It still has plenty of employment in public works but priced itself out of the private market long ago. This bill is part of a major push to kill the non-union competition.

A carpenters’ union handout on an early version of the measure says it will “help create a labor shortage for the Non-Union Sector.” That version directly mandated union apprenticeships for all workers; the council’s been redrafting it all year to make the purpose less obvious.

Yet Intro. 1447-A still exempts union workers from its mandated 40 hours of safety training, on the grounds that they’ve supposedly already had it. Hmm: Union sites are responsible for half the city’s 10 construction deaths this year. Yet all the bill requires of union workers is an eight-hour refresher course if they haven’t had safety training in five years.

As for that 40-hour course: Right now, only 22 small local non-union outfits offer the training — nowhere near enough to handle 100,000 workers before the requirement starts kicking in March 1. (The bill asks the city Small Business Services agency to OK more trainers, but with no deadline.)

Ironically, this means big trouble for a cause progressives normally champion: Minority- and women-owned construction firms are largely non-union. Heck, it’s going to make it harder to build affordable housing, too.

With de Blasio signed on, expect the council to ram the bill through without a hearing, before the victims can see what’s coming.