Construction trade union leaders said Wednesday they will push for a project labor agreement for the Bengals stadium to guarantee the jobs go to local workers.
Such agreements usually guarantee all the work to union laborers. Jerry Monahan of the Greater Cincinnati Building Trades Council, said he would be willing to include non-union contractors.
Hamilton County Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus, who has led the stadium project, said he does not believe it.
''What they want us to do is exclude non-union companies, and we're not going to do that,'' he said.
Even without a project labor agreement, unions will probably fill 70 percent of the jobs on the stadium, he said. ''There is no such thing as a non-union steelworker.''
The union leaders attended a county commission meeting to dispel a barrier to agreement, challenging commissioners' belief that union ranks are short on women and minorities.
Mr. Monahan said the discussion was an opening salvo.
''We started the war,'' he said after the commission meeting. ''We think we have been fair to the minority community, and we're not going to allow them (commissioners) to say otherwise.''
African-Americans make up half the work force in some trades here, he said.
Matthew Kolbinsky of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 212 said that one study of Kentucky unions showed that 84 percent of women and minority journeymen graduated from union apprenticeships as opposed to non-union training programs. The Rev. William Land, social action chairman of the Baptist Ministers Conference, was doubtful.
''If they got it, put them on the job and show the figures,'' he said in an interview Wednesday. Mr. Kolbinsky said Cincinnati businesses and government have been importing undocumented workers to keep wages down.
''This is the line in the sand, this (stadium) job,'' he said after the meeting. ''It's a high-profile job.''
Cincinnati is not friendly to project labor agreements. In 1994, Lazarus threatened to scrap its new downtown department store if the project labor agreement was not repealed by city council.
Mayor Roxanne Qualls and Councilwoman Bobbie Sterne reversed their votes, effectively repealing the agreement, and lost the endorsement of the AFL-CIO in the next election.
On Wednesday, union leaders vowed to dog the stadium contracts and show up for all future county commission meetings.
Connected with the union issue is a question of stadium jobs for African-American workers.
The county vowed in a 1996 agreement with Cincinnati city council to ''aggressively seek to include small businesses, minority enterprises, and women business enterprises'' in the stadium project.
City Councilman Dwight Tillery said during a council meeting Wednesday that the county's goals for including minorities in the stadium project should apply not only to contracts, but also to jobs.
''What I keep hearing is there are jobs, but, for all practical purposes, there are none for African-Americans,'' he said. ''We need to make sure this happens.''
Lucy May contributed to this report.
