Labor & Employment Law

Construction Workers Protest Pulte Homes? Practices

By James Parks

Construction workers joined with homeowners, religious allies and local union leaders in a two-day leafleting blitz to educate participants at the annual AARP convention in Orlando, about Pulte Homes? profits-over-people home construction tactics.

Members of the Building Justice Campaign blanketed the Orange County Convention Center and 17 hotels hosting convention attendees with thousands of fliers outlining Pulte?s practice of hiring contractors who regularly disregard product quality and worker safety in favor of speedy construction. Building Justice is a collaboration of the Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District Council 15, the Sheet Metal Workers (SMWIA) and the AFL-CIO.

?We didn?t feel that it was right that seniors, who worked so hard their entire lives to be able to buy a home for retirement, had Pulte take advantage of them,? said John Satterfield, an organizing director for IUPAT.

It doesn?t benefit retirees to spend their hard-earned money on Pulte, considering Pulte?s quality of construction and the tactics they?ve taken to strong-arm their customers into settling for badly constructed homes.

The leaflets drew attention to other homeowners? widespread dissatisfaction with Pulte and linked major construction defects, such as leaking roofs, faulty electrical wiring, and cracks in home foundations to the abuse that workers who build for Pulte homes face on the job.

Construction workers who were employed by Pulte contractors have testified that their supervisors regularly pressured them to speed up construction and many did not meet required standards.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on October 01, 2010 (boomark / email).