Hartford Labor Peace Ordinance

The Hartford Labor Peace Ordinance

The state of Connecticut invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing the Adriaen’s Landing Convention Center and Marriott Hotel with a commitment to the promise of good jobs brought by new development. Likewise, the City of Hartford gave the Waterford Group a tax break valued at approximately $30 million dollars for the Hartford Marriott Hotel. In exchange, Hartford leaders expected that the Waterford Group would follow the city’s labor peace ordinance, which is supposed to protect the city’s investment by requiring the developers to sign a labor peace agreement.

Hartford Code of Ordinances--Sec. 2-766. No strike agreement required.

All development project managers are required to sign a written agreement with any labor organization seeking to represent employees at the development project which agreement provides a procedure for determining employee preference on the subject of whether to be represented by a labor organization for collective bargaining and further provides that the labor organization will not strike the development project in relation to the organizing campaign.

When the state appropriated the funding to support Adriaen's Landing, the legislative leadership was clear that the city's living wage and labor peace ordinances would apply:

It is a law of the City of Hartford which will apply to every portion of this project, but more particularly, to the private hotel. That law will be enforced through the City if necessary, but nonetheless will apply in any event to assure among other things, that the labor neutrality provisions of the Hartford City ordinance on living wage as well as the living wage provisions of that Hartford ordinance, apply to all of the work that is done on this project as well as on the hotel that is part of this project.
-Sen. Kevin Sullivan, Senate transcript for May 1, 2000; pp. 71-72.

This project, it will be subject not only to the statutes that we pass here, but also will be subject to the municipal code of the City of Hartford. And specifically, Article 11 of the municipal code dealing with the living wage, that as to the hotel, the hotel will be a development project under that article because it satisfies all of the definition requirements that are that.
-Sen. Don Williams, Senate transcript; pp. 101-102.

The Connecticut Attorney General has issued an opinion affirming that the City of Hartford has the right to enforce the ordinance. (Click here to read the press release and here to read the opinion.)

However, the Waterford Group thinks that the law doesn’t apply to them. In order to uphold the law and protect the city’s investment in the hotel, on May 19, the City of Hartford sued to prepare to remove the Waterford Group’s $30 million tax break.

"The reason for labor peace is simple: If the city is an investor and partner in a development, we don't want our investment degraded,"
-Matthew J. Hennessy, the chief of staff for Mayor Eddie A. Perez (Source:“Hotel Labor Issue Clouds Hartford's Redevelopment,” The New York Times, May 18, 2006).