The executive board of the state’s AFL-CIO is asking Steve Schrag, a volunteer with the Naugatuck Valley Project, to voluntarily resign from the state’s AFL-CIO Health & Safety Committee because of his vocal opposition to a planned Amazon distribution center on the Waterbury-Naugatuck line. “Due to your opposition, you endangered the approval of this project, which would provide 1 million work hours for members of the Connecticut Building Trades,” the board wrote in a letter to Schrag on Tuesday. “This project has the potential to create thousands of good paying jobs with strong benefits for Connecticut workers.” The letter includes a notice for Schrag to cease and desist, halting all actions “opposing projects that would benefit the hardworking members of the Connecticut State Building and Construction Trades Council.” Ed Hawthorne, president of the AFL-CIO, said he wholeheartedly stood behind the contents of the letter and in full support and solidarity with “the hardworking men and women of the building trades. Mayor Paul K. Pernerewski Jr. said the site on which the planned facility will be built is in an industrial park. “It was always designated to be a property that was to be developed,” he said, adding that the city has extensive greenspaces including Washington Park, Bunker Hill Park among others that people can enjoy. He added that the development of the property will bring in 1,000 jobs and millions of money in tax revenue.
https://www.rep-am.com/localnews/2024/12/15/afl-cio-urges-activist-to-resign-over-opposition-to-amazon-project-on-waterbury-naugatuck-line/