Labor issues heat up again at Convention Center

The rules that govern workers at the Convention Center have long confounded planners wishing to bring their business to Philadelphia. Even those who have learned the byzantine code marvel at what it takes - and what it costs - just to set up and dismantle an exhibit.

Consider the ubiquitous laptop. If it is for personal use, an exhibitor can set it up. For audiovisual purposes, a member of the stagehands union must do the job, at $37 an hour. And if it is used to register conventioneers, the task falls to a union electrician, at $46 an hour.

Or consider the cost of a booth, the mainstay of conventions. When you add up everything, the work of a carpenter comes in at $107 an hour in Philadelphia - more than $24 higher than the national average and more costly than in Washington, Boston, Chicago, and Baltimore, according to a 2009 survey by an industry trade magazine.

Now, with the $786 million publicly funded expansion nearing completion, the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority is seeking sweeping changes to simplify the rules that govern the building's union workforce and, in the process, reduce costs for hosting events. Among the most contentious proposals: Cutting the number of unions from six to as few as three and making the center's workers employees of the state.

The authority argues that changing work rules and imposing a different management structure for the labor force are needed to make the bigger center, scheduled to open in March, more competitive in a challenging market. But in Philadelphia, where unions are a political force, the proposals have created a showdown between the Convention Center's top officials and one of the city's most potent labor leaders.

"We need a workforce with a hospitality mind-set in this building if we are going to compete nationally," said Ahmeenah Young, president and chief executive of the Convention Center since 2008. "I don't care what union you are in. We can't go into the new building with a hangover of problems from this one."

John J. "Johnny Doc" Dougherty, business manager of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, contended that Young's true agenda was to decimate his union's share of work at one of the region's most reliable job sites.

"Instead of treating us like partners, the Convention Center management has decided to engage in this cloak-and-dagger, clandestine-type operation to cut some unions out of the center," Dougherty said.