The Vermont Construction Company announced in a press release that it was partnering with a Minneapolis-based nonprofit to monitor and enforce labor and housing rights for workers and subcontractors of the company.
The organization, Building Dignity and Respect Standards Council, is a worker-centered nonprofit based in Minneapolis — akin to Vermont’s Milk with Dignity Standards Council, which monitors workers’ rights in the state’s dairy industry.
The preliminary agreement would have the nonprofit oversee the company’s job sites and worker housing to ensure basic standards for fair treatment of workers are being met.
The agreement is the first of its kind in Vermont’s construction and building industry, according to Will Lambek with Migrant Justice — an industry that in part relies on immigrant workers — and will create a pathway for builders like Vermont Construction Company “to have accountability within the labor contracting chain.”
“All the work sites are getting audited, any housing that’s provided to subcontractors is getting audited if it’s provided as a condition of employment, and then if there’s a subcontractor that is not abiding by the program’s code of conduct, then Vermont Construction Company would be made aware of that and they would no longer be able to do business with that subcontractor,” Lambek said of the agreement in an interview.
Doug Mork, the executive director of the Minnesota-based nonprofit, said his organization has signed a preliminary agreement with the company, but the next step is to iron out a legally-binding contract.
The hope is to have an agreement in place before the construction season ramps up closer to the spring, he said.
“We’re at the very beginning. We do not yet have a long-term agreement that really lays out exactly how this is going to work,” Mork said. “This is sort of step one of Vermont Construction Company and the Building Dignity and Respect Standards Council agreeing to partner and build the model in Vermont, and get the model up and running there.”
A press conference with speakers from Vermont Construction Company, the Building Dignity and Respect Standards Council and Migrant Justice is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.
The partnership comes after the town of Colchester in December issued violations against Vermont Construction Company for housing company workers in “grossly hazardous and unsafe” spaces.
Part of the company’s headquarters was being used to house an estimated 17 people “despite having no approvals for life safety features for human occupancy of a public building,” according to a town violation issued in December.
The property was “structurally unsafe,” with no smoke or carbon monoxide detectors, no fire extinguishers and several electrical violations, according to town documents.
A previous violation issued against the company in September revealed similar living conditions at a nearby property, where 60 people were living, town and state fire marshal officials found.
Tenants, who officials said were seasonal workers, were living in small, congregate sleeping areas, in bunk beds and in some cases on air mattresses.
Reporting by VTDigger found that the company owns residential properties in Shelburne, Essex and Williston that are also used to house workers.
(Follow up reporting by VTDigger found that Vermont Construction Company has been involved in half a dozen lawsuits and counterclaims that accuse the company of over charging customers, incomplete work, and consumer fraud).
After these violations were uncovered, Vermont Construction Company officials in December approached Migrant Justice and said they were interested in emulating Vermont’s Milk with Dignity program in the construction industry, Lambek said. Lambek referred the company to the Building Dignity and Respect Standards Council, founded in 2019, which operates a similar operation in Minnesota within the area’s construction industry.
Tatum Stocker, a media contact with Vermont Construction Company, declined to answer questions over the phone, and declined to answer emailed questions, telling VTDigger the company would address questions at the scheduled press conference.
Mork, who has been with the organization since 2020, said the nonprofit works with contractors and developers in the Twin Cities to develop codes of conduct for workers in the industry.
The organization has also found footing in partnering with municipalities around the Twin Cities greater area to provide oversight on publicly invested development or building projects, Mork said.
“A developer or a builder might say, ‘I don’t really have responsibility for workers on the ground, I just hire the contractor. I don’t get to tell them how to run their business,'” he said in an interview. “This is really a chance to say, we think you can partner with us and impact how workers are treated, and really set a standard for job sites for your projects.”
Before an official agreement is signed, the nonprofit will need to find staff to conduct audits of Vermont Construction Company’s job and housing sites.
“For this model to work, we need a worker organization on the ground that’s really engaging with workers,” he said.
But Mork said he hopes to expand this model in Vermont and sign agreements with other companies in the state. He noted the nonprofit will look to Migrant Justice and the Milk with Dignity Standards Council for assistance in applying their models to Vermont’s building industry.
“I think this would be much more difficult if there was not the infrastructure that is there,” he said. “We’re starting in a very strong place.”
