Two buildings on Bond St. in Brooklyn, literally across the avenue from one another. Construction on 33 Bond St. and 61 Bond St. started on virtually the same week in 2016. The union-built building at 33 was completed and open for business in 28 months, well ahead of schedule. The non-union-built hotel at 61 was 4X smaller than 33 Bond, took nearly 6 years to complete, a worker was killed, there was wage theft, criminal charges and a conviction.

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In our first of a 3-part series, Billy the Builder interviews people from that Brooklyn neighborhood to talk about what it was like as each building was being built, and what they each bring to the area today, now that they're both finished.

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"Someone Died"

In the interview above, Brooklynite John Grossman mentions that "someone died in the building of the Ace Hotel" at 61 Bond St. in Brooklyn. That "someone" was RNC Construction employee and non-union worker Paul Kennedy. On the evening of October 11, 2016, a stabilizing rod on a crane exploded from its casing on the machine and hit Mr. Kennedy in the head. It took his colleague, the only other worker on the job at the time, almost a half hour to discover him lying on the ground because that worker had walked off for a few minutes. By the time he found and got help to Mr. Kennedy, he was dead.

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One union member familiar with the event told Union-Built Matters, "One: that accident should have never happened. That crane piece that hit him should have been found during the everyday inspections you do on that equipment. So that makes me wonder if they were following safety standards and even doing inspections." 

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"Two: you don't walk off a job site and leave a guy there alone with major equipment running. You keep an eye out for each other." He added, "That worker had a family. He had kids. But the company was running a shoddy work site. That was RNC. They're huge. They're everywhere in New York. Is this how they run a project? But, hey, they say non-union is cheaper than union, so I guess what's one guy's life matter?"

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A Familiar Non-Union Pattern

Indeed, RNC had other problems on that worksite. Repeated safety violations had resulted in stop-work orders from the Department of Buildings, delaying work for months at a time while inspections and corrections were administered. And claims of wage theft to the tune of $1.7 million resulted in convictions of executives at the company. All of these factors caused the construction phase, which was supposed to take just two years according initial paperwork filed with the DOB, to last nearly six years.

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The union member we interviewed said, "That's 4 years of a job site taking up space in downtown Brooklyn, depriving that neighborhood of long-term jobs there, of tax income, of character. Four years lost. Still want to tell me that non-union is cheaper than union? Bull."​