Quick Take
The Watsonville City Council reversed its earlier decision to scrap the city’s project labor agreement with trade unions, adding changes that would allow certain projects to be exempt from having to use unionized workers.
Weeks after the Watsonville City Council voted to scrap its longstanding agreement with local trade unions for city construction jobs, elected officials reversed their decision and voted to reinstate the agreement with changes that include exempting some city projects from a requirement to use unionized labor.
During a last-minute special meeting Tuesday afternoon, the city council voted 4-3 to reinstate Watsonville’s project labor agreement. In a separate 5-2 vote, the city agreed to adopt some requests from the Monterey/Santa Cruz Building and Construction Trades Council, including changes to how the city handles water and sewer projects.
A project labor agreement, or PLA, sets the pay, benefits and work hours for certain unionized city construction jobs.
The changes approved Tuesday add a three-year expiration date for the agreement, which expires on Dec. 31, 2028. The agreement will now apply to projects that cost at least $1.5 million and employ workers from three or more trades — such as electricians, plumbers and sheet-metal workers. Watsonville’s previous agreement, passed in 2014, did not have an expiration date and covered projects that cost more than $600,000.
On the most contentious sticking point — whether to exempt wastewater projects from the requirement to use union labor — city officials and union leaders agreed to a compromise Tuesday that would allow the city to exempt only projects that receive no bids from contractors.
Watsonville Public Works Director Courtney Lindberg told elected officials last month that the previous arrangement discouraged competitive bids from contractors, especially for city water and sewage projects. A staff report noted that some projects weren’t attracting any bids or companies were providing quotes that far exceeded the city’s budget for a project.
Some of the wastewater projects city staff want to exempt from the agreement, such as improvements to the city’s plant that treats drinking water for the cancer-causing chemical chromium-6, are critical and can’t be delayed any further to send it out for rebidding, said Lindberg.
The trades council asked the city to include a clause in the agreement that required city officials to meet with the unions to discuss construction projects that fail to get any bids so the two sides could negotiate changes. Under the new agreement proposed by Watsonville Mayor Maria Orozco and passed on Tuesday, the city will have to notify the trades council if a project does not receive any bids, but will not be required to formally sit down with unions to rework its request for proposals.
Casey Van Den Heuvel, a representative for the trades council, agreed with the changes during Tuesday’s meeting.
The city council previously voted on Nov. 5 to scrap Watsonville’s agreement with the trade unions, citing an inability to find a common ground on exemptions for wastewater projects. Several councilmembers blamed the agreement for the low number of bids and high number of incomplete projects. The decision came after nearly 150 trade workers packed the council chambers in a tense meeting last month where union leaders and city officials publicly sparred over the terms of the deal.
The council’s previous decision to rescind its agreement with the trades council offered a “clean slate” to renegotiate a new one that could yield better bidding results for city projects, Councilmember Kristal Salcido said. Elected officials asked city staff to provide monthly updates with the unions and return in February with a proposal for a comprehensive update to the agreement.
However, Councilmember Casey Clark, who originally voted to rescind the PLA earlier this month, said Tuesday that he was concerned about getting rid of the agreement with the city’s trade unions without having anything to replace it and worried about how soon the city council would be able to revisit the issue. “I’m not comfortable with the PLA disappearing without something to replace it immediately,” he said.
Van Den Heuvel told city councilmembers Tuesday that the Nov. 5 decision was based on “one-sided” information and that the negotiation process had not been done in good faith. He added that reinstating the agreement would restore trust and stability between the city and the trade unions.
“This vote isn’t about one person or one council,” said Van Den Heuvel. “It’s about doing what’s right by the workers who build this city and ensuring taxpayer-funded projects are built safely, ethically and on time.”
Councilmember Jimmy Dutra, who voted against reinstating the PLA along with Salcido and Eduardo Montesino, told community members Tuesday afternoon that his duty as an elected official is to put the Watsonville community first and he would like to see city construction projects completed. “All of us agree that we want a PLA,” he said. “We just want our projects done. That’s what we wanted and it turned into a circus.”
Clark said that reinstating the deal will allow for staff to create an agreement that works for both the city and the unions. City staff said they will continue to negotiate with the trades council to update any of the existing terms of the PLA.
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