“Their whole workforce is comprised of guys from the southeast and southwest portion of the country,” said Mike Engbert, a Laborers’ District Council representative. “They don’t hire regionally, they don’t hire locally. It’s strictly company guys. They don’t make any effort when they come up here to work with local tradesman.”
The recently started pipeline rehabilitation work will likely last 30 to 35 days and replace a line under Interstate 75, one that is 24 inches in diameter and stretches from Ohio to Louisiana, according to Ray Hipsher, of Franklin, an Ohio Laborers’ District Council pipeline specialist.
They also are replacing a small section of pipe between the Great Miami River and a nearby railroad line, Hipsher said.
The 40 or 50 jobs MG Dyess likely needed for the projects could have been filled by qualified local residents, helping them and boosting the local economy, according to Mario Cespedes, a Laborers’ District Council representative.
“The local Laborers’ International Union has the people who are ready, trained, willing to do this work, but unfortunately some contractors and some owners are unwilling to incentivize their contracts to hire locally,” Cespedes said. “They don’t have any requirements (to do so).”
Spectra Energy Partners spokesman Phil West said in an email to this newspaper that MG Dyess “was competitively selected from multiple bidders qualified to meet the exacting standards required for this work.”
MG Dyess did not return a call seeking comment.
Cespedes said what’s happening locally is a “pervasive problem” that also is going on in other parts of Ohio with seemingly no solution in sight, especially as drilling efforts have slowed with the recent drop in gas prices.
“Most legislators have said ‘If the industry is slowing down now, let’s not impose regulations on it,’” Cespedes said.
The challenge, Engbert said, is that while some energy companies are “good corporate citizens” who hire contractors who he said are responsible and have a skilled and safe workforce, other contractors “basically shop around for the best pricing and go with the best bargain.”
Doing so hardly amounts to a bargain, because companies and their contractors, while paying a lower wage for workers from other parts of the country, typically also pay for the lodging, gas and meal expenses of those workers, Hipsher said.
Independent contractors hiring from a workforce that may not be fully certified means possible compromises to safety and efficiency, according to Tom Nickson, 72, of Middletown, who said he has been in the pipeline maintenance business since 1977.
“Every job we do, we have to be trained,” Nickson said. “They can bring in anybody they want because they can do it cheap. They don’t have the expenses we have. We get all benefits and stuff. That’s what we’ve worked for all these years.”
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