This is sort of an assumption, but it looks like the $30 million campus renovation was a union job.
If so, it is rather ironic that the renovation was so expensive that the National Labor College’s closure has the agreement of AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, who is also the school’s chairman of the board of trustees:
via The Washington Post:
The National Labor College, an education venture for working adults supported by the AFL-CIO, will close next year because of financial difficulties school officials attribute in part to the construction of a conference center several years ago on the Silver Spring campus.The college, with 599 online students this fall, announced Wednesday that its board of trustees voted this week to accept a closure plan. Word of the impending shutdown had been circulating since at least mid-November.
[snip]
[College President Paula] Peinovich said the college was burdened by debt incurred in a major campus renovation that began in 2003, including the construction of a 72,000-square-foot conference center named for Lane Kirkland, the late AFL-CIO president. The center, dedicated in 2007, was unable to generate enough revenue to erase the debt, Peinovich said, and even failed to cover its own operating costs.
Peinovich said the college owed about $30 million when she took over as president in 2010.
[snip]
The college employs 58 faculty and staff members and has an annual operating budget of $12 million, she said, with about $5 million funded by the AFL-CIO. Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, is chairman of the college’s board of trustees.
.
No railing against the capitalist system that necessitates these layoffs? What gives?
