Union protests contractor at Fremd High, football turf halted

Protesters from labor union Local 118 put up a 12-feet-tall inflatable rat at Fremd High School in Palatine Thursday to show their distaste for the school using nonunion labor on a paving project.

The picket has prompted other union workers on site - including those installing the new artificial turf on the football field - to walk off the job.

It's unclear yet whether this will delay the completion of that work, but Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 spokesman Tom Petersen said school officials had already come up with contingency plans to play football games at other fields in the event construction was delayed for any reason.

"It's too early to tell how this is going to affect the season," Petersen said.

Fremd's first home football game is a freshman game scheduled for Sept. 13 against Wheeling. The first home varsity game is Oct. 3 against Conant, Fremd's homecoming.

District 211 Assistant Superintendent for Business David Torres confirmed the district does have a contract for paving work with Murphy Paving and Sealcoating.

Leo Esparza, vice president of Local 118, said his union has had to file action against Murphy Paving with the Department of Labor in the past for failure to pay workers a prevailing wage.

Torres said the school district has a right to employ either union or nonunion contractors, but that one of its responsibilities is to insure that a prevailing wage is being paid to all workers it employs.

Mike Murphy, president of Hinsdale-based Murphy Paving, acknowledged his "young company" was cited and fined three years ago for paying under the prevailing wage when the firm did had its first public contract and was unfamiliar with the wage law.

But Murphy said his company has since been in compliance with the law and has issued certified payrolls, but that the union is conducting a smear campaign against Murphy because it won't hire union workers for nonpublic jobs, the vast majority of its work.

"What (the union is) doing is stopping us from working," Murphy said, adding the union has directed union operators at asphalt plants not to sell to him. "When we're competing against the private workforce, we can't compete against employers that pay far less."

Murphy said the nonunion going rate for pavers is $15 to $25 an hour, versus upward of $50 an hour for union workers.

District 211 Superintendent Roger Thornton said the paving project would take two to three days to complete. Because of that short time frame, he didn't see the work stoppage having any impact on the completion of the turf fields.

The District 211 board in May signed off on the project to build artificial turf fields at all five of its schools for a total of more than $8.2 million. Fremd and Schaumburg high schools are scheduled to get turf fields this year. Work at Schaumburg was scheduled to start this week, but its unclear if workers there will react the same way as they did at Fremd.

District 211 board President Robert LeFevre said he was disappointed by the delay but was confident the labor conflict would be resolved.

"We just want to make sure the fields get finished properly," he said. "That's the most important thing."

Speedy Gonzalez Landscaping is handling the turf project for all five district schools.