Q&A
Challenges for smaller developers and contractors in meeting wage and hiring standards
0:40:58
·
123 sec
Council Member De La Rosa inquires about the challenges smaller developers face in meeting wage and hiring standards. Ahmed Tigani and Lucy Joffe explain various difficulties, including additional costs and administrative burdens.
- Additional costs affecting competitiveness for smaller developers are highlighted.
- Administrative and operational challenges, especially for emerging subcontractors, are discussed.
- The impact of enforcement structures mirroring prevailing wage enforcement on smaller contractors and MWBEs is explained.
Carmen N. De La Rosa
0:40:58
What are some of the challenges that you foresee for smaller developers in meeting wage and hiring standards?
Ahmed Tigani
0:41:06
So I I think some of the there's 2 parts of this, a, the additional there's the additional cost that come with it, which may make it different difficult for them to be competitive in this work additionally, the administrative and the operational pieces of the legislation would may make it difficult, especially for merging and new subcontractors to this industry, in this industry, to be in compliance with the legislation that it can include additional technology costs, additional internal operation operation and labor costs for them to be in compliance with the bill.
Lucy Joffe
0:41:44
So this I'll add that this bill has the enforcement structure that mirrors prevailing wage enforcement.
0:41:51
And on prevailing wage enforcement projects, there is proactive submission of payrolls, etcetera.
0:41:57
So there is separate from any costs incurred by the city.
0:42:00
It requires substantial back office functions that not all small subcontractors have.
0:42:08
And so we absolutely see that that can be a factor which limits their ability to participate, their willingness to participate, right, to add those staff members, because typically what we see is people have to have additional staff to be able to provide those payer act proactive that that proactive paperwork including but not limited to payrolls.
0:42:28
It also means that sometimes general contractors are less willing to hire folks they haven't worked with before because they don't have that trusting relationship or the confidence that they're gonna be able to hire the additional staff and do the additional payroll and network.
0:42:41
All of that can be a limiting factor for some of the newer entrants into the market, smaller contractors, MWBEs, etcetera.
0:42:48
Some of those folks that we really want to make sure are getting those opportunities to work on HPD projects.
0:42:55
Some of the structure of how wage enforcement or wage requirements is structured is really important.
