I’m the President of Fast Trek Steel. We have been in business in upstate for the last decade, employing just over 100 workers. We are committed to paying our workers prevailing wages, helping to ensure that we do quality work and that our workers make enough money to raise their families in New York.
In 2009, Fast Trek Steel bid on a large project in the Capital Region to perform structural steel erection for an expansion of the Beech-Nut baby food factory in the Town of Florida. The project applied for over $100 million in tax exemptions from the Montgomery County IDA. After receiving IDA subsidies, the company awarded the contract to a company from North Carolina, who brought in out-of-state workers to do the job. If Fast Trek had the job, 45 local workers could have been employed at 40 hours a week for 3 months, likely generating over $1 million dollars in wages that would have gone right back into our local economy. In addition, the out of state company was found to be exploiting undocumented workers—an injustice that our tax dollars should not support.
This isn’t the first time that IDAs have subsidized companies that hired workers from outside New York. In 2007 Fast Trek bid on another IDA project that also was awarded to an out-of-state company. The wages and resources generated by these projects effectively leave the state, doing nothing to uplift our workers, communities, or our economy.
IDAs should require that any jobs created by the projects they subsidize are good jobs, and that they support local responsible contractors. As a contractor, I can say that we can do quality work and pay our workers a fair wage—it can be done, and business can thrive while remaining responsible and committed to their workers and local community. This is what Fast Trek has been doing all along.”