ARTICLE
by Eddie Sprecco, CEO - - Published in Monday Morning Quarterback - July 26, 2021 On Friday, the SANDAG board of directors voted to "negotiate" exclusively with the San Diego Building Trades Council for a union-only Project Labor Agreement (PLA), despite earlier commitments from the same board to allow for apprentices from the National Black Contractors Association and other state or federally approved Apprenticeship programs, such as AGC San Diego Apprenticeship. This latest move is disappointing, but not surprising. PLAs of this type are not actually "negotiated" in any real sense. There is a standard set by the National Building Trades Unions and rigorously enforced. These standards use exclusion as a feature, not as a bug. They are intended to exclude non-union workers and force benefit payments to subsidize underfunded union plans at the benefit of their union members, and at the expense of the non-union workers who earned the benefits but won't receive them. It is lucrative business for the San Diego Building Trades Council to pass PLAs, which is why they have invested over $10 million in the past decade to legislate unionization where traditional organizing efforts have failed. The long term, multi-front effort includes changing election laws and state legislation that restructures local government, and threatens to cut off state funding unless PLAs are adopted over the will of the local voters. The unrealized threat of losing state funding, which the Building Trades Council themselves created, is intended to make the costs of PLAs seem reasonable to the uninformed. Those PLA costs are HIGH. In practice, PLAs in San Diego have a history of increasing project costs by 15-25%, lowering workers' average pay, undermining collective bargaining, hurting local hire efforts, and discriminating against minority craft workers. For these reasons, AGC has traditionally opposed blanket PLAs like currently proposed at SANDAG. It's not just that blanket PLAs will harm some of our members and be hugely disruptive to the construction industry - it's that those impacts will be felt mostly by the very SANDAG board that is authorizing them. At the end of the day, AGC members will build the infrastructure of the region - it will just be delivered at a much higher cost to SANDAG's budget and its other priorities if under a PLA. In Sacramento, elected officials in the state legislature have come slowly to the realization what a corrosive force the Building Trades Unions can be. Per Politico, said one understandably anonymous Democratic lawmaker of the State Building Trades, "To not be able to make progress on housing and climate is totally unacceptable, and they're a huge part of the reason we're not making progress." The failure to address housing - a top issue for California voters - has also given life to the recall campaign against California Governor Gavin Newsom, which was once considered far-fetched. The political ramifications of the Building Trades Councils actions in San Diego will likely be more direct. By attempting to pass a PLA that excludes 80% of contractors, craft workers and voters in San Diego County, SANDAG will doom its hopes in 2022 of passing a 30-year, $160 billion transportation funding initiative to build out its already ambitious 2021 Regional Plan. Unfortunately, the 2022 ballot is likely the only chance to pass such an initiative with a bare 50% plus one vote; the court decision that allows less than a 2/3rds majority for citizens initiatives to increase taxes is widely expected to be tossed out. AGC wants the SANDAG Board to be successful in implementing its ambitious goals while juggling its many competing priorities. We will continue to point out the problems with PLAs and suggest solutions to mitigate the downside - such as limiting PLAs to large, complex projects. This would mostly erase the negative effects of blanket PLAs while allowing small, local contractors, and local workers to participate and be fully compensated. That is the role of the AGC when working with local governments - pointing out to the decision makers the potential benefit or harm of a policy that will impact the construction industry. In the public building world, those benefits and harms are borne almost entirely by the taxpayers and voters of San Diego. Like in Sacramento, affordable housing proponents, social justice, environmentalists, supporters of transit advocates, and taxpayers associations - those not funded by the Building Trades Council - will need to have a louder voice to protect their priorities from the destructive and self-perpetuating nature of blanket PLAs. Hopefully, the SANDAG board will listen to the concerns of these many stakeholders and present a solution later this year that balances priorities. Otherwise, SANDAG risks being a regional planning organization in name only, with future construction funding and decisions going directly to local governments that will argue to their constituents, "you are better off keeping your tax dollars here than sending them to downtown San Diego."
by Eddie Sprecco, CEO - - Published in Monday Morning Quarterback - July 26, 2021
On Friday, the SANDAG board of directors voted to "negotiate" exclusively with the San Diego Building Trades Council for a union-only Project Labor Agreement (PLA), despite earlier commitments from the same board to allow for apprentices from the National Black Contractors Association and other state or federally approved Apprenticeship programs, such as AGC San Diego Apprenticeship. This latest move is disappointing, but not surprising. PLAs of this type are not actually "negotiated" in any real sense. There is a standard set by the National Building Trades Unions and rigorously enforced. These standards use exclusion as a feature, not as a bug. They are intended to exclude non-union workers and force benefit payments to subsidize underfunded union plans at the benefit of their union members, and at the expense of the non-union workers who earned the benefits but won't receive them. It is lucrative business for the San Diego Building Trades Council to pass PLAs, which is why they have invested over $10 million in the past decade to legislate unionization where traditional organizing efforts have failed. The long term, multi-front effort includes changing election laws and state legislation that restructures local government, and threatens to cut off state funding unless PLAs are adopted over the will of the local voters. The unrealized threat of losing state funding, which the Building Trades Council themselves created, is intended to make the costs of PLAs seem reasonable to the uninformed. Those PLA costs are HIGH. In practice, PLAs in San Diego have a history of increasing project costs by 15-25%, lowering workers' average pay, undermining collective bargaining, hurting local hire efforts, and discriminating against minority craft workers. For these reasons, AGC has traditionally opposed blanket PLAs like currently proposed at SANDAG. It's not just that blanket PLAs will harm some of our members and be hugely disruptive to the construction industry - it's that those impacts will be felt mostly by the very SANDAG board that is authorizing them. At the end of the day, AGC members will build the infrastructure of the region - it will just be delivered at a much higher cost to SANDAG's budget and its other priorities if under a PLA. In Sacramento, elected officials in the state legislature have come slowly to the realization what a corrosive force the Building Trades Unions can be. Per Politico, said one understandably anonymous Democratic lawmaker of the State Building Trades, "To not be able to make progress on housing and climate is totally unacceptable, and they're a huge part of the reason we're not making progress." The failure to address housing - a top issue for California voters - has also given life to the recall campaign against California Governor Gavin Newsom, which was once considered far-fetched. The political ramifications of the Building Trades Councils actions in San Diego will likely be more direct. By attempting to pass a PLA that excludes 80% of contractors, craft workers and voters in San Diego County, SANDAG will doom its hopes in 2022 of passing a 30-year, $160 billion transportation funding initiative to build out its already ambitious 2021 Regional Plan. Unfortunately, the 2022 ballot is likely the only chance to pass such an initiative with a bare 50% plus one vote; the court decision that allows less than a 2/3rds majority for citizens initiatives to increase taxes is widely expected to be tossed out. AGC wants the SANDAG Board to be successful in implementing its ambitious goals while juggling its many competing priorities. We will continue to point out the problems with PLAs and suggest solutions to mitigate the downside - such as limiting PLAs to large, complex projects. This would mostly erase the negative effects of blanket PLAs while allowing small, local contractors, and local workers to participate and be fully compensated. That is the role of the AGC when working with local governments - pointing out to the decision makers the potential benefit or harm of a policy that will impact the construction industry. In the public building world, those benefits and harms are borne almost entirely by the taxpayers and voters of San Diego. Like in Sacramento, affordable housing proponents, social justice, environmentalists, supporters of transit advocates, and taxpayers associations - those not funded by the Building Trades Council - will need to have a louder voice to protect their priorities from the destructive and self-perpetuating nature of blanket PLAs. Hopefully, the SANDAG board will listen to the concerns of these many stakeholders and present a solution later this year that balances priorities. Otherwise, SANDAG risks being a regional planning organization in name only, with future construction funding and decisions going directly to local governments that will argue to their constituents, "you are better off keeping your tax dollars here than sending them to downtown San Diego."