NEWS OF INTEREST 

LOCAL CONSTRUCTION FIRING BEGINS IN LONG BEACH

Monday, March 1 the Long Beach Port Commissioners led by Mayor Bob Foster enacted a Project Labor Agreement on the Middle Port Project.  While the Big Labor bosses spoke about all of the jobs this would bring to Long Beach no one mentioned the quiet clause in the agreement that caps the number of current construction employees that can be used on a project at "10 core employees."  "Core employees" are defined as those who have "appeared on the Contractors active payroll for 60 of the 100 days before award of the construction contract." Those qualifying must also live in Orange or Los Angeles Counties.  After the contractor exhausts his limit of 10 they must obtain additional employees from union hiring halls where everyone must go in order to obtain work, even those who do not wish to join the union.

The pretense that this agreement will mean more jobs in Long Beach is false. PLAs actually create a revolving door. Current employees are forced to leave while union employees are escorted in. As 85% of construction employees are not members of union many Long Beach families will suffer under this new union exclusive agreement.

Some good news for ABC leadership in California: this week, the Merit Shop advanced “Operation Permanent Offense” in one city and stopped a union-backed apprenticeship requirement at a community college district.

1.     Proposed Oceanside Charter Contains Unprecedented Protections for Taxpayers Concerning Fair and Open Bid Competition, Local Government Power, and Worker Freedom of Choice

On Wednesday, December 16, the Oceanside City Council voted 3-2 to place a proposed charter on the June 2010 ballot for Oceanside voters to consider.  This charter includes a ban on Project Labor Agreements!  If it is approved, this charter would be the first in the state to contain a provision that ensures fair and open bid competition for city-funded construction.

The charter also includes a provision giving the City of Oceanside power to determine its own prevailing wage policies for purely municipal construction.  Finally, the proposed charter includes a “paycheck protection” provision which requires city public employee unions to get approval from their members to take money from their paychecks for political purposes.  (You may remember Proposition 226 in 1998 and Proposition 75 in 2005 were statewide ballot measures for paycheck protection.)

Read the proposed charter here and consider promoting such a charter in your town.  Below is a link to a newspaper article that includes comments from Bill Baber, Government Affairs Director of the ABC San Diego Chapter.

OCEANSIDE: Council wants June vote on charter city idea – North County Times – December 17, 2009  

2.      College District Ditches Union-Backed Discriminatory Requirement for Bidders

In 2004, an IBEW organizer was elected to the board of trustees of the Allen Hancock Community College District in Santa Maria (in Santa Barbara County).  He is now chairman of the board.  A PLA threat there died in 2006, but the unions are still advancing schemes to cut competition and increase costs on college construction.

Shortly before a bid deadline of December 17, the college district issued an addendum to bid specifications for the One-Stop Student Services Center.  The addendum added “Enhanced Safety Requirements” which required 75 percent of the workforce of the general contractor and all subcontractors to be a graduate of a California state-approved apprenticeship program.  Contractors immediately began calling ABC to complain.

ABC sent an email and made phone calls to the college facilities staff requesting the bid deadline to be extended and the “enhanced safety requirements” to be removed through a new addendum.  ABC also coordinated with the Santa Maria Valley Contractors Association and the Western Electrical Contractors Association.  On December 17, the college issued two addenda removing the union-backed requirement and extended the bid deadline to December 22. 

3.      The Merit Shop Will Bring Trouble to Elected Officials in Riverside County Who Supported PLA

The board of trustees of the Riverside Community College District voted 3-2 on Tuesday, December 15 to negotiate a Project Labor Agreement for future construction funded by a bond measure.  There was an outstanding turnout of contractors, workers, and local business and association representatives to oppose the PLA, but the three votes were solidly locked up to support the PLA.  The board was bombarded with emails funneled through the ABC Southern California Chapter’s Voter Voice grassroots system, but to no avail.  A plan is now in place for various contractors and associations to make the college and its board of trustees accountable to the taxpayers as negotiations begin with the unions for the PLA.

This is the fourteenth local government in California to vote for a government-mandated PLA in 2009.

Kevin Dayton

State Government Affairs Director

Associated Builders and Contractors of California

(916) 439-2159

Performance of the PLA on the Port of Los Angeles Pier 400
Independent Analysis
ABC has obtained an independent analysis by management firm DMJM+Harris dated June 29, 2004 about the performance of the PLA on the Port of Los Angeles Pier 400, Phase II project.  The PLA for this project established a goal to hire 20 percent of the workforce locally, but the two general contractors along with their subcontractors actually used a local workforce of 7 percent and 12 percent.  Although the PLA also contained a 5 percent “at risk” hiring goal, contractors attained a local workforce of .17 percent at risk workers, perhaps because the “majority of people” attending job fairs mandated by the PLA “lacked the basic skills necessary to qualify for apprenticeship openings.”  Only two of the 1147 people that worked under the PLA were from “at risk” populations.

There were apparently no consequences to the unions or the contractors for failing to meet these goals.  Unions love to tout goals for local and “at-risk” hiring as a benefit of PLAs, but they never talk about the actual results, for obvious reasons.

The report also states that “the PLA did not promote a safer working environment” and notes that there wasn’t a difference in safety experience between Phase I (without a PLA) and Phase II (with a PLA).  It concludes, “Based on past experience managing projects of similar scope and size, we believe that the objectives and results on Pier 400 could have been achieved without the PLA.  Similar results were achieved on Pier 400, Phase one, without a PLA.”

Kevin Dayton
State Government Affairs Director
Associated Builders and Contractors of California
(916) 439-2159


The Riverside Community College District Votes Quickly

10:02 PM PST on Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The Press-Enterprise

The Riverside Community College District board's new motto is apparently: Vote quickly, not carefully. The board pushed ahead with a sweeping new labor agreement last week, without giving the public -- or even board members -- a chance to understand the issue before the vote.

That nonsense needs to end. The district needs to provide thorough answers to the questions surrounding this pact before taking any further action. District officials need to explain the reason for the agreement, how the district and taxpayers might benefit from it and what effect the pact would have on the cost of college projects built with local bond money.

Seldom has a board decision raised more warning flags than last week's vote on a draft project labor agreement with the Riverside and San Bernardino Building and Construction Trades Council. The board voted 3-2 to approve the draft pact and have Chancellor Greg Gray negotiate a final deal. The agreement would set workplace and contracting rules for all district projects of more than $1 million that use money from Measure C, the $350 million bond measure district voters approved in 2004.

But the circumstances surrounding the vote last week defy any conception of proper public procedure. The board received the document only minutes before the meeting began, so neither the trustees nor the public had any time to digest the draft pact before the board voted. Voting blindly is just reckless policy, particularly on an issue as far-reaching as the proposed labor pact.

The board could not hold any informed discussion on the document under those circumstances. But providing information was not high on the agenda: The district offered no analysis of how the agreement would affect college projects.

That omission is astounding. Such agreements almost universally favor expensive union workers over cheaper nonunion labor. So the pact could inflate the costs of college projects, thus reducing what the bond money will buy for students and the community. And district taxpayers will certainly want to know why a majority of the board is intent on rushing ahead without studying the financial consequences of the pact.

But when Trustees Virginia Blumenthal and Janet Green asked for more time to study the issue -- and actually read the draft agreement -- the rest of the board rebuffed the request. Just why is this deal so urgent to Mary Figueroa, Jose Medina and Mark Takano that they cannot spare time to answer questions about the consequences for the district?

The final agreement is slated to return to the board for approval in coming months. The chancellor and board will need to provide a clear rationale for the agreement, along with a detailed analysis of the pact's provisions. And the board should allow a full public airing of those issues before it takes any vote.

Complete transparency is the only acceptable course. The reasons for this proposal remain unclear. But acting in haste, without public input, invites the suspicion that district taxpayers' interests are not the trustees' primary concern.


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