Chris Brooks and Rebecca Kolins Givan

Guest columnist

Chris Brooks is a labor journalist from Tennessee.

Rebecca Kolins Givan is a professor in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers.

Nashville is booming.

HCA Healthcare and Mitsubishi are just two of the latest employers to expand or relocate their corporate headquarters in the South’s “it city.” A new Amazon corporate office is the anchor to a mega development downtown, where white collar professionals can grab a drink with the flocks of tourists who visit the city every year.

But this growth depends on builders. The workers building the hotel rooms, stadiums and corporate offices are laboring in the hot sun, often barely earning a living wage. Workers have to commute for hours through the now customary gridlock because they can’t afford to live nearby, as soaring property values and housing costs push more and more working families out of the city.

Construction workers need to be unionized

Every year workers die on Nashville construction sites, where contractors do everything they can to cut corners on safety and save money by employing non-union workers. For years, contractors, developers and policymakers have been bemoaning a shortage of construction workers that threatens to slow the city’s boom. This shortage means that workers who are mistreated, or underpaid, can literally walk across the street and find a better job.

But without the broad bargaining power of unions, improvements are often modest and employers still hold the upper hand. And all too frequently, workers who speak up about unsafe working conditions are targeted by employers for retribution. The ever present threat of deportation or reprisals against immigrant workers and their families is often enough to keep them from having a voice on the job. By taking advantage of non-union workers, employers can build things fast, high and cheap, at a great human cost.

But there is another way. Community organizations like Stand Up Nashville have brought Nashville residents together to say that the city deserves better. The community benefits agreement for the new Major League Soccer stadium ensures that the stadium will be built safely, by properly-compensated, fairly-treated workers. And the agreement also recognizes that the skyrocketing housing costs of this boomtown are displacing longtime Nashvillians and working people who provide essential services in this city every day.

By requiring the stadium’s developers to build affordable housing, including the three-bedroom apartments that make it possible to raise a family in the city, Stand Up Nashville showed that another way is possible.

Unions in Nashville are offering workers (and their employers) a high road to a healthier, more equitable city. The painters' union has opened a worker center, offering training and advocacy for workers who have been the victim of exploitative practices—from unsafe working conditions to brazen wage theft. The ironworkers have massively increased the amount of safe, unionized reinforcing ironwork happening in Nashville by easing the path to union membership and supporting bids by unionized contractors to increase their market share in the city.

Unions mean good quality of life

Union ironworkers can make a decent living without fear of hazardous, illegal working conditions or a lack of health insurance or retirement security. Construction jobs can be good jobs, and with an economy like Nashville’s, there’s no excuse for denying workers fair pay and safe work.

A state program seeks to attract young workers to the skilled building trades, suggesting “it’s not just a job, it’s a career.” But real careers in construction are only possible with the kind of protections and benefits that unions offer, including wages sufficient to support a family, and the opportunity to plan for a secure retirement. In our recent research, we interviewed Todd Overcast, an Ironworker who had worked both union and non-union jobs. Overcast told us that working a unionized construction job provides “a better life and a better way than doing it for someone that’s non-union. Your pay is better. It’s just better all round.”

Nashville is at a crossroads. It can continue booming, and solve its worker shortage, by ensuring that construction jobs (maybe even jobs building affordable housing) are good union jobs that allow everyone to work and live with dignity. Or it can allow employers to continue taking the low road, which will inevitably lead to further inequality, continued depletion of affordable housing, and add more tragic, preventable deaths on construction sites.

City officials and developers can choose to do better. Unions are ready, willing, and able to improve safety, recruit qualified workers, and build a better Nashville for everyone.

Chris Brooks is a labor journalist from Tennessee and a graduate of the labor studies program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He currently works as a staff writer at Labor Notes. Rebecca Kolins Givan is associate professor in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.