Quick Take
The Watsonville City Council deferred a decision this week on a contentious plan to update its labor agreements with construction trade groups. Local workers are pushing to preserve workplace protections, while city officials are raising concerns over construction delays and rising costs.
The Watsonville City Council is considering new rules for labor contracts on municipal infrastructure projects – changes city staff say are needed so contractors’ bids for municipal construction come in on budget but that local trade unions say will shortchange their workers.
Nearly 150 skilled trade workers — many of whom came to the meeting straight after work — filled the city council chamber Tuesday night to plead with elected officials to not rescind the city’s project labor agreement, which set employment terms for certain city construction projects.
The city council postponed any decision until a special meeting on Nov. 5 while it continues negotiations with the Monterey/Santa Cruz Building and Construction Trades Council.
The city’s current project labor agreement (PLA), negotiated back in 2013, applies to construction projects budgeted at more than $600,000 and employing workers in more than three trades, according to City Attorney Samantha Zutler. It sets standards for wages, benefits like retirement and health care, and working hours.
Public Works Director Courtney Lindberg told elected officials that the current PLA limits the number of competitive bids from contractors on city contracts, particularly water and sewage projects. A recent staff report said some city projects aren’t getting any bids at all because contractors have either chosen to not bid on a project or bid way out of the city’s budget.
The city and the trades council have been renegotiating the terms of the agreement for at least two years. The two sides have come to agreement on some changes, according to Casey Van Den Heuvel, a representative of the Monterey/Santa Cruz Trades Council. They include requiring the PLAs to expire after three years, meaning they would have to be renegotiated. The current agreement passed in 2014 does not have an expiration date. The city and the trade union also agreed to raise the threshold for how costly a project has to be before it’s governed by the PLA from $600,000 to $1.5 million.
However, the two sides have not agreed on a city plan to exempt wastewater projects from being governed by the PLA. Lindberg said she’s been having ongoing discussions with the trades council on the issue.
Van Den Heuvel said the trade group also wants the city to agree to create a joint administrative council made up of city staff and trade union representatives to resolve disputes and hold contractors accountable when they aren’t following the requirements.
“Let’s say a project is having trouble, right?” he said. “We can come to that agreement within that resolution. We can change anything we want within that PLA within the [joint administrative council].”
Watsonville elected officials disagree with that idea. The issue with having a joint council, according to Councilmember Kristal Salcido, is that it might extend the bidding process for projects longer than needed because city staff would have to call for proposals again.
Salcido was persistent in trying to get the trade group to agree on dropping the joint council idea as the two sides were getting close to settling on the remaining issue on whether to exempt wastewater projects from the agreement.
“We’re so close on that third term. Come on, let’s make a deal,” Salcido told Van Den Heuvel on Tuesday night.
City staff had recommended the council rescind the existing agreement and then negotiate a new agreement with significant changes. But some Watsonville elected officials expressed discomfort with repealing the current agreement without having a new one ready to go. “I don’t feel comfortable moving forward with this action tonight with, again, not having one in place that we can agree to,” said Mayor Maria Orozco.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, Van Den Heuvel and the city council engaged in a back-and-forth negotiation on the outstanding issues for almost an hour. Salcido and Councilmember Jimmy Dutra were adamant about finding a middle ground between the city and the trades council on two terms that had not been nailed down in previous negotiations.
Councilmember Eduardo Montesino said the lack of competitive bids can’t be blamed on the project labor agreement, rather that the city council is responsible for not updating bidding requirements contractors must meet for city projects, such as experience in doing certain kind of work, since the PLA was adopted in 2014.
In contrast, Dutra blamed the project labor agreement for unfinished projects. “I feel like we’ve been in this hamster wheel for three years,” he said. “How much more do I neglect the projects in the city of Watsonville that aren’t getting done?”
Construction workers from Watsonville packed the meeting to refute any doubts about this type of overarching labor agreement. During public comment, they credited the project labor agreement with increasing job opportunities for local plumbers, electricians, sheet metal workers and creating a pipeline to the trades since the agreement requires contractors to hire union trade workers, who usually start off as apprentices.
“Using a PLA helps to benefit our community because we employ people that need to have training with the help of people who have already gotten training,” said Susan Carter, a former member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 234.
What these skilled trade workers really want is the opportunity to work where they live, Watsonville native Jacob Panovich told elected officials on Tuesday.
“We are the workforce,” said Panovich, a training coordinator for Plumbers & Steamfitters Local 62. “Look at this room, we are the people that want to do this work, and that PLA will help us do that. Without that, we see out-of-town contractors come in.”
At the Nov. 5 special meeting, Van Den Heuvel said he plans to continue to negotiate with city officials on what details need to be added or changed to the project labor agreement. The council will not consider repealing the current agreement at that meeting.
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