Unions Win Big in City Construction Showdown
Contractors Accuse Councilmembers of Being Bought and Paid For
Meagan Harmon, the newest member of the Santa Barbara City Council, applauded all the “passion, conviction, and emotion” she encountered on both sides of the issue. Councilmember Randy Rowse termed it “the low watermark” of his nine years in office. Councilmember Jason Dominguez recalled he’d been in one of the most dangerous and violent townships in South Africa when the council deliberated over the issue in early December. “I wish I could go back to safety,” he not-so-comically lamented.
At issue was an arcane spending authorization of $95,000 connected to an obscure but ferociously controversial labor agreement that gives building trade unions vastly more say in who gets hired and who does not for City Hall construction contracts of $5 million and more. In the upper echelons of City Hall, no one is really sure how these project labor agreements — or PLAs, as they’re called — will actually work. But there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who won what’s been one of the most intensely waged behind-the-scenes battles anyone in City Hall can remember: the trade unions.
By the time the council began deliberations this Tuesday afternoon, no council ears had been left unbent. The unions — electricians, pipefitters, iron workers — that spent generously, even lavishly, in recent elections to get the council’s current majority elected made it clear the issue was extremely important to them. So, too, it should be noted, did many of the nonunion building contractors who, for many years, have built City Hall’s major public works projects. But in the end, the outcome wasn’t even close. The council voted 6-1 in accordance with union wishes to hire outside legal consultants to help City Hall negotiate the next step.
