Workers Rally for Jobs at Construction Site of New LG HQ

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J., April 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Elected officials from Northern New Jersey joined more than 300 workers from the Bergen County Building and Construction Trades Council at a union rally today, underscoring the need for jobs and calling for LG Electronics' massive headquarters construction project to move forward.

The new LG building, to be constructed on the Englewood Cliffs site of today's union rally,  is expected to create hundreds of much needed area jobs. Statewide unemployment is above the national average, at 9.5 percent. Worse still, the Bergen County Building Trades Union is suffering from more than 40 percent unemployment. Recent concerns raised by groups based in New York – allegedly about the new 8-story horizontal office building's potential impact on their view from across the Hudson River – have threatened to delay the project.

"We can't afford any more delays, our guys want to get back to work," said Rick Sabato, President of the Bergen County Building and Construction Trades Council, who organized the rally.  "The New Yorkers threatening to hold up LG's new headquarters project are literally taking money out of our pockets, food from our tables, and the shirts off our backs."

"If LG feels the delays are too costly, it could decide to move its headquarters out of the area. And we would see $2 million in local tax revenue, gone. Hundreds of jobs, gone. Our region's reputation as being business friendly, gone," said NJ State Senator and Deputy Majority Leader Paul Sarlo (D-36), who also serves as Chairman of the New Jersey Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee. 

"LG has been a good corporate citizen of Bergen country for 25 years. How anyone can claim to have 'environmental concerns' over this project when LG is building a world-class LEED-certified building and planting 700 new trees, is beyond me," said Englewood Cliffs Mayor Joseph Parisi Jr. "We don't tell New York what they can and can't build, and we can't let them tell us."

Other elected officials, dignitaries and VIPs – including NJ State Senator Bob Gordon, NJ Assemblywoman Marlena Caride, NJ Assemblywoman Connie Wagner, Bergen County Freeholder Steve Talenni, to name a few – were on hand to show their support for organized labor and to underscore the importance of LG's new headquarters to the economy and the environment.

The LG project has received all necessary approvals from the State of New Jersey, Bergen County and the Borough of Englewood Cliffs.  The green corporate campus is designed to house more than 1,200 LG employees by 2016.  In the short term, the project will create thousands of construction jobs. 

SOURCE Building-Construction Trades Dept.