The approval of SB922 by the California Senate and Assembly ensures that Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) on public construction projects include taxpayer protection provisions and will empower the governing boards of local entities to decide whether or not to use PLAs that include such provisions on their local projects. The bill was sponsored by Senate Pro-Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John Perez.
The truth about PLAs is that these are contracts signed between construction trade workers and project owners to establish working site conditions and management, utilized by both public and private owners. By scheduling workforce needs, it is a tool to save precious taxpayer dollars, ensuring that a project is built on time, and on budget. In the private sector, PLAs have worked for Toyota, Honda, Disneyworld, and virtually every power plant recently constructed in California. Locally in the San Diego region, PLAs have been used to construct the Petco Park, 655 Broadway, Otay Energy Center, Palomar Energy Center and both the Olivenhain and San Vencente Dams.
Recently, the San Diego region has been impacted by falsely-labeled “fair and open competition” initiatives in the cities of San Diego, Escondido and El Cajon. These controversial measures are regulatory bans on PLAs that unfairly prohibit a public agency from even considering a PLA, even if taxpayers derive efficiencies similar to the private sector. Last week, paid signature gatherers have submitted a petition to the City Clerk in the city of San Diego, after repeatedly misleading voters about the measure.
SB922 is a true vision of fair and open competition, opening the toolbox of competition based on merit, not the force of the ballot-box bully. Public agencies across the region, and the state, will at last be free to choose, whether or not to enter into a PLA, on a project-by-project basis. If they do choose to voluntarily enter into a PLA, the following taxpayer protections will be required:
--Both union and non-union contractors can bid on and be awarded contracts;
--Workers cannot be discriminated based on race, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, political affiliation, or membership in a labor organization;
--Prohibits any work stoppages or disruptions on projects, with any dispute being resolved by a neutral arbitrator;
--Workers on hazardous jobs will drug-use tested.
Contrary to false claims by opponents, this bill does not require any public agency to use PLAs on public projects. Under this bill, public agencies such as the County of San Diego cannot adopt controversial bans against PLAs which include these taxpayer protections. Charter cities, such as Oceanside and Chula Vista, are not prohibited from adopting such bans, but will cease to receive state funding if the bans are not lifted by 2015. This bill will also expose the true fiscal taxpayer impacts of unfair PLA bans such as that proposed by self-serving contractors in the City of San Diego.
According to Tom Lemmon, Business Manager of the San Diego Building Trades Council:
In these tough budget times, it is only fair that public agencies in San Diego have all the tools available to them, as private developers do, by open competition based on merit, not the force of the ballot-box bully.
There has never been stronger taxpayer reason to oppose the PLA ban in the city of San Diego, as the city could lose future state funding and jeopardize major projects.