People vs. Unions: Struggling for Open Competition in California

July 22, 2010 – 10:52 am
FOX News’ Special Report with Bret Baier is the latest to cover the grassroots effort to bring quality and accountability to taxpayer-funded construction by preventing the use of government-mandated project labor agreements (PLAs) in California.

Here is the video from the July 21 edition of Special Report: http://www.youtube.com 

The FOX News Liveshots blog also covered this story in a sister piece to the video report above.  Here are some excerpts (“Liveshots: People vs. Unions,” 7/21):

“You are getting less product for a higher price and we believe in quality, accountability and value,” says Eric Christen of the Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction, a group that lobbies on behalf of non-union contractors.

Christen says that voters in many communities throughout the Golden State are frustrated by the cost of union labor.

None more than the city of Chula Vista, a small community near San Diego, which Christen says lost a contract for a 32-acre hotel and entertainment complex because union leaders scared off investors by demanding a Project Labor Agreement (PLA), a term used to describe a legal agreement common between union contractors and public agencies.

And while Gaylord Entertainment, the sponsors of that project, will not confirm that organized labor kept them from pursuing the venture further, Christen says voters in Chula Vista responded this June by officially banning city officials from engaging in union agreements when negotiating future construction.

But more communities are taking Chula Vista’s lead.

This month, San Diego County supervisors passed an ordinance opening the bidding process for all construction projects to all contractors, both union and independent.

San Diego County Supervisor Bill Horn believes this change in how the county does business will save his community 10 percent to 20 percent on future projects.

And in a 4-to-1 vote, the San Diego Supervisors decided to give their constituents the final word on whether to award contracts regardless of union affiliation. An initiative is slated for the November ballot.

Now proponents of union agreement bans are pointing their efforts to putting similar measures on other local ballots in Los Angeles, Sacramento and 20 other cities in California.

These reports do a great job of breaking down this issue.  They also highlight the tremendous opportunity that the people of San Diego County have to make sure that Big Labor’s demands never cost them jobs again.

Please visit our earlier posts for more information on the efforts to prevent wasteful and discriminatory PLAs both in California and Chula Vista specifically.  

California Union Rebuke
Voters rebel against project labor deals that raise costs.

This year's growing revolt against government excess is resulting in all sorts of political surprises, and a pair of examples in southern California deserve more attention. 

The San Diego suburb of Chula Vista, where 61% of voters broke for Barack Obama in 2008, voted last week to prohibit the city from bowing to union demands. The city of Oceanside, also near San Diego and which also went for Mr. Obama in 2008, passed a similar measure with 54%.

By 56% to 43%, Chula Vista voted in favor of Proposition G, which bans project labor agreements. These rules let unions pre-emptively set the terms for municipal construction projects, such as requiring the contractors to consent to union representation, special benefits or pay collectively bargained wage rates. Such agreements increase taxpayer costs as competitive bidding between union and open shops is suppressed.

From Boston's Big Dig to the San Francisco airport, if it's a project with egregious cost overruns, a project labor agreement is probably involved

Voters knew firsthand how costly and destructive this favoritism could be. In 2006, the developer Gaylord Entertainment announced plans to build a hotel and convention center in Chula Vista, only to cancel the project after two years in part because of union intransigence. With unemployment somewhere in the double-digits and cities statewide worried about bankruptcy, project labor agreements were an indulgence Chula Vista could no longer afford.

The Associated Builders and Contractors of San Diego hopes it will be a model for other cities and states. It has collected enough signatures to put a similar measure on the ballot in San Diego, eventually expanding to 20 other California cities and then on to states like Nevada.

Within a few weeks of taking office, Mr. Obama signed an executive order encouraging project labor agreements for federal construction projects larger than $25 million. The revolt in southern California suggests that voters are figuring out that such political favoritism costs them money.

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.