Portland’s VA Medical Center may be on track to award a $12 million elevator modernization contract to a non-union Florida company whose owner is on trial for defrauding the federal government.
The work involves modernizing 21 elevators in all, and it’s one of about 90 similar elevator projects at Veteran’s Administration buildings around the country. Robert Larzalare, national organizer for the International Union of Elevator Constructors, says local union-signatory elevator contractors bid on the Portland job, but Armstrong Elevator of Largo, Florida, ended up as the low bidder in the federal procurement process.
Steve Simpson, also a national organizer with the Elevator Constructors union, says Armstrong Elevator also appears to be the low bidder on VA elevator projects in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Cleveland and Chillicothe, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Topeka, Kansas. But the company’s ability to do business with the government may be in doubt…