Workers take grievance to Rockville Centre's Village Hall

Those who attended Rockville Centre's village board meeting on June 8 — or drove by Village Hall at around 8:15 p.m. — might have been startled to find union protesters marching around the block carrying coffins.

Following the "pallbearers," 100 or so union protesters marched around the block chanting, "Hey, hey, ho, ho. Avalon has got to go."

"As long as Rockville Centre continues to allow AvalonBay to build on Banks Avenue, we'll have a problem with Rockville Centre," Salvatore Speziale, one of the union organizers for Local 66, told the rest of the protesters through a megaphone.

The union has been protesting in front of Village Hall for over a week. Its main concern is that developer AvalonBay is not using union labor to build its 349-unit apartment complex on Banks Avenue —although it hired union labor for the demolition phase of the project.

The union says it is also concerned about the safety of the site itself, the southern section of which is contaminated with a dry-cleaning chemical. Construction is taking place only on the northern part of the property, which is not contaminated, and will start on the southern portion of the property after the state Department of Environmental Conservation has certified that the area is clean.

After marching around the block, protesters entered Village Hall, filling the courtroom where the Board of Trustee meetings are held. When village business was concluded, union representatives addressed the board.

"Listening to you guys here, I can see you guys work very hard and you care about your village," Speziale said. "This is why we're very disappointed about what's going on here with the Avalon project."

The union petitioned the village to pass a resolution to require AvalonBay to hire union labor, which the union says the City of Glen Cove did when AvalonBay built an apartment complex there. But the village does not have the authority to take such action — and Village Attorney A. Thomas Levin said he doesn't believe that any municipality has that authority. "I think that was a misstatement," Levin said. "I don't think Glen Cove has the authority to do any such thing, either."