The Recorder’s multi-part investigative reporting on our region’s housing crisis offers a balanced and nuanced view of the political, social, and economic factors contributing to this issue. It was however quite disappointing to see labor unions scapegoated, yet again, as a contributor to the problem rather than part of the solution.
Prevailing wage laws, which supposedly scare investors away from new affordable housing developments, are one of the few remaining legal protections working people have from the insatiable corporate appetite for cheap, exploitable labor. Rather than casting labor unions as an enemy to the housing-insecure in Franklin County, we could be seen as the last line of defense in an unfair economy that would seemingly prefer to have us all out on the street.
Joshua Freund
Member, U.E. Local 274