NEW WINDSOR – Hudson Valley Building Trades Council is upset with two area construction projects related to hospitals.

This week, union members picketed the Bon Secours Medical Center and Pedestrian Bridge project in Port Jervis. Pace Construction of Pennsylvania is the developer and construction manager. Demolition, site work, concrete and structural steel are being performed with non-union labor.

The unions are also concerned with the Woodland Ponds senior living project in New Paltz, which is affiliated with Kingston Hospital.

A picket line there was taken down on Friday in anticipation of a meeting between the unions and the developer next week.

Building council President Todd Diorio said both projects are of concern to the local unions. “It’s amazing that both Bon Secours and Kingston Hospital would actually hire contractors who do not have health insurance,” he said. “The Woodland Pond project in New Paltz has IDA funding through the Ulster County IDA and they are hiring many contractors from out of the area and out of the state.”

Diorio said St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital in Newburgh and Cornwall is a prime example of a facility that supports local union labor.