Vikings Stadium Meeting Or Exceeding Hiring Goals

Hey, do you guys remember the stadium debate, and how it was going to be awful, and the jobs would be outsourced, somehow, to out of state companies, and Minnesota construction workers who desperately needed the work were going to somehow get screwed? And all the sub contractors were GONNA BE FERENERS AN TAKE OUR JERBS RAWR RAWR RAWR.

Remember?

Yeah, whatever. Not only are Minnesotans doing almost all of the heavy lifting (literally and figuratively...well, except for the Bigge-ass crane), they're doing it at  a rate that exceeds even what most stadium supporters thought.  Doug Belden of the Pioneer Press tells us the following from the previously linked article:

From mid-December to mid-June, Minnesota workers had worked 92% of the stadium work hours. That comes out to 133,000 of 145,000 working hours total. Average wages are anywhere from $25.96/hr to $73.13/hr. Let's average that out to around $50/hr per worker, give or take, to get an idea of how much in wages earned we're talking. 50 X 133,000 = $6,650,000 in gross wages earned for Minnesotans since construction of the stadium began.

Boy, $6 million+ of taxable money pumped into the economy in six months, just by putting people to work. What a terrible idea that was.*

*That's what we call sarcasm, kids.

70 of 76 sub-contractors that are performing some kind of work on the stadium are Minnesota based companies. Again, a figure of 92%.

The stadium project also set out some pretty aggressive employment equality goals, among those 32% minority employment, and 6% women employment, and it has consistently exceeded those goals, too. Mr. Belden also notes that the Vikings stadium project has higher minority employment goals than Green Line Light Rail project, which had a wailing and gnashing of teeth level that was at mute compared to the Vikings stadium.

Even stadium supporters are pleased with these results:

Sen. Dave Senjem, R-Rochester, who as Senate majority leader in 2012 voted for legislation funding stadium construction, said he was "generally happy" with the numbers.

"I think 92 percent is higher than I would have expected," Senjem said.

But wait, we would expect an answer like that. I mean, Senjem supported the bill. Wouldn't it be cool if someone who opposed the bill would at least acknowledge that these are pretty impressive numbers? How about you, former Speaker of the House and anti-stadium guy Kurt Zellers?

Rep. Kurt Zellers, R-Maple Grove, who as House speaker voted against the bill, declined to comment. Zellers is running for the GOP nomination for governor.

Oh. Well then. But we know why Kurt Zellers is the way he is, don't we DN faithful?

Somewhere, Doug Mann is preparing a lawsuit for something, against someone. If I don't tell you right now that I have no idea what Doug Mann is actually doing, and I never ever want to know what Doug Mann is doing, I guess that lawsuit could be aimed at me. So no, I have no idea what Doug Mann is doing. But I bet he's got a lawsuit in the HOPPAH somewhere.*

*Allegedly. I have no idea. And lawsuits don't go in a HOPPAH anyway.

In an unrelated note, the Wilfare crowd will be holding a joint meeting with the Flat Earth Society at Wood Lake Nature Reserve tonight at 7.*

*Again, also allegedly. I have no idea if the Wilfare crowd has any meetings planned. I don't know if they're a real, you know, organization. I don't even know if there's a Minneapolis based chapter of the Flat Earth Society. But I did go to Wood Lake a lot when I was a kid. It was cool as shit.