The Union thugs won’t be happy about this!
The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted today to ban union-only Project Labor Agreements, which are called PLAs. I imagine that Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s backers in the local Democratic Party won’t be too happy about her vote!
This is great news! PLA’s do NOTHING for taxpayers. The unions basically promise to not strike if there is a PLA in place. Let them strike! The PLAs ban non-union contractors from bidding on government projects. That is unfair!
PLAs force government agencies to spend MORE money and get less. They also interfere with other labor agreements. They are ridiculous!
A previous Board of Supervisors actually passed an ill-fated PLA. They included Cynthia Coad, Jim Silva and Todd Spitzer. O.C. Assemblyman Ken Maddox got caught up in the mess as he and Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle urged the Supervisors to vote for the PLA. Coad was later ousted and replaced by Supervisor Chris Norby. Maddox went on to lose a State Senate race to John Campbell, who made his PLA support a campaign issue.
Only 9% of Latino workers belong to unions. Less than 13% of all workers belong to unions. Why cater to such a small percentage of the overall workforce? That is just plain nuts and unfair!
Click here to read the actual ordinance. Click here to read more about PLAs – and why they are bad news for all of us.
I also found this article about the vote on another blog:
Orange County Board of Sups Votes 5-0 To Ban union-only Project Labor Agreements
The Associated Builders & Contractors (ABC), Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction (CFEC) and the Western Electrical Contractors Association (WECA) are proud to report that open competition in public works construction got a huge boost in Orange County California today. From Eric Christen, executive director of CFEC:
With over 100 merit shop employees, contractors, and association reps in attendance, the Orange County Board of Supervisors in a 5-0 vote banned Project Labor Agreements with an ordinance. This precedent setting vote puts into law the Supervisors’ stated support for open competition, non-discrimination, and the best quality construction at the best price for taxpayers.
Please email the Orange County Board of Supervisors and thank them for their vote!
OC Supervisor Janet Nguyen – janet.nguyen@ocgov.com
OC Supervisor John Moorlach – john.moorlach@ocgov.com
OC Supervisor Bill Campbell – bill.campbell@ocgov.com
OC Supervisor Chris Norby – chris.norby@ocgov.com
OC Supervisor Patricia Bates – patbates@ocgov.com
You can be sure this is just the beginning!
It’s a sad statement on the state of the OC GOP when a Pro – Union agreement being taken away is big news. We are talking about a Board of Sup.’s that has been a majority Rep.’s forever but sold there soul to the Unions to try to build an airport. Are we supposed to feel comforted that all these years after the airport was killed they are finally killing the agreement? Yippie!
I wonder if Chris Prevatt and dan C and the rest of the Jannies in the DPOC are starting to sour on janet Nguyen yet?
This is sheer fluff. The Board, this one or another in the future, can easily reverse this stance. It is a cosmetic application of makeup to advance a political image and that makeup can just as easily be washed off. Much adieu about nothing.
The supervisors’ vote was another sop to big business bosses and their paid lobbyist – the ABC and the Coalition for Unfair Employment in Construction. First, even as Sup. Norby said, “Whey are we wasting time doing this?” It changed nothing. The board of Sup. was anti-worker rights when they were first elected and they still are. Workers (working people who vote) should know that the Sup.s don’t support you having any rights in the work place. They support the same position as those business bosses did at the turn of the 20th Century when they were having the police, military or pinkertons shooting any workers, who dared ask for “more,” in the back.
Second, PLAs have been around for decades, including one that was used on the Hoover (Boulder) Dam project.
PLAs do not ban any contractor from bidding covered projects. It’s easy enough to check this out, just call the County of Orange Public Works department and ask them to tell you how many non-union contractors bid projects when the County PLA was in effect from 2000 through 2005. Over half were non-union. Tells you something about the writers of this blog. When they tell a lie in the opening of their opinion piece, what does that tell you about the rest.
This Blog supports business rights over peoples rights.
The Bloggers were really off base when they said that only 9% of Latino workers belong to Unions. First, they are wrong on the numbers because in construction unions over 50% of the members are Latino. Second, 67% of Skilled Craft workers belong to Unions in California. This blog continually spews the false doctrine of the small but well funded, anti-worker rights group, the ABC contractors, that says that only 20% of workers are in Unions. They want workers and others to believe that California workers are facing the same obsticles that workers in the Southern States still face every day. The Southern States have continued the same anti-worker system they have since the Civil War. Workers’ having the right to have a Union is what has made California great, with a huge economy and high living standards.