Quick Take
The Watsonville City Council voted Wednesday to scrap its project labor agreement, which sets standards for wages, benefits and working hours on city projects. Following the vote, city staff and the local trades council will go back to the drawing board to create a new set of rules.
The Watsonville City Council voted Wednesday to scrap its longstanding agreement with trade unions for city construction jobs and go back to the negotiating table after failing to come to an agreement on how to handle water and sewer projects.
In a 4-3 vote, elected officials rescinded Watsonville’s project labor agreement to negotiate a new one with the Monterey/Santa Cruz Building and Construction Trades Council.
“This gives us a chance to back into two neutral positions coming in good faith,” said City Councilmember Kristal Salcido, who voted in favor of rescinding the current agreement. “I absolutely want a PLA for the city.”
A project labor agreement, or PLA, sets the pay, benefits and work hours for certain unionized city construction jobs. Watsonville’s old agreement, passed in 2014, had no expiration date and covered projects that cost more than $600,000.
Watsonville Public Works Director Courtney Lindberg told elected officials during an Oct. 14 meeting that the arrangement limits the number of competitive bids the city receives from contractors, especially for water and sewage projects. City spokesperson Michelle Pulido previously told Lookout that the city wants the agreement waived for these types of projects because it wants to hire crews that specialize in wastewater projects. A city staff report said some projects aren’t attracting any bids at all or getting bids that exceed the city’s budget.
Last month, the city council deferred taking any action on its project labor agreement to continue negotiating with the trades council at Wednesday’s special meeting.
In recent talks, the city and the trades council had agreed to add a three-year end date to the agreement and raise the amount a project would have to cost before it was covered by the agreement from $600,000 to $1.5 million. However, the two sides disagreed on whether to exempt wastewater projects from being required to use unionized labor. The exemption was the only term the city and the trades council could not agree on.
In a letter submitted by the trades council to city staff on Oct. 23, the group offered to make an exception to allow three specific wastewater and sewage projects to be exempt from the requirement to use union labor. Under the union’s proposal, if those projects failed to receive at least three bids, the city would have the opportunity to rebid without a PLA, but to do so staff must notify the trade council via email and schedule a meeting to discuss the project.
Other wastewater projects would not be exempt from the labor agreement because they cost less than $1.5 million, Casey Van Den Heuvel, a representative of the Monterey/Santa Cruz Building and Construction Trades Council, told elected officials Wednesday night.
Salcido, along with Councilmembers Eduardo Montesino and Jimmy Dutra, asked Van Den Heuvel to exempt all of the wastewater projects the city is planning to send out for bids from the labor agreement.
Councilmembers expressed frustration with the low number of bids and lack of projects being completed. Some of the wastewater projects city staff want to exempt from the PLA, 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 due to rebidding, said Lindberg.
“My worry, to be honest, is that if they do go over that [$1.5 million] threshold, then the whole timeline that we’ve been talking about all night is going to jeopardize some of these projects,” said Dutra.
Van Den Heuvel told Lookout he was very surprised that Salcido and Dutra backtracked on what they had asked of the trades council at the Oct. 14 meeting, when both were adamant about finding common ground. The two councilmembers, along with Montesino and Casey Clark, voted Wednesday to rescind the agreement.
“It’s unprecedented that the council will negotiate not in good faith,” Van Den Heuvel said. He said he feels that the union came back with a compromise to allow some wastewater projects to be exempted only to find that city councilmembers were not willing to meet halfway despite saying they wanted to.
Elected officials went back and forth on whether to adopt the trade council’s letter into the agreement, make any modifications with the group’s approval or rescind the PLA entirely. Mayor Maria Orozco and Councilmembers Ari Parker and Vanessa Quiroz-Carter opposed rescinding the agreement.
Parker told Lookout following Wednesday’s vote that she was angry and frustrated with her colleagues on the city council who voted to rescind the PLA.
Watsonville has always been a union city, and Parker said she’s disappointed that the council has voted to end an agreement that supports and creates opportunities for unionized workers. “I mean, we’re trades,” she said. “This is who we have always been. This is who we continue to be. This is what attracts people to Watsonville.”
She added that she was impressed by Van Den Heuvel wanting to work with elected officials and give in to what the council was asking for in a modified PLA. “And yet, they wanted more,” she said. “That’s not negotiating, that’s blowing it up, and it’s a power grab, and it was unconscionable.”
Elected officials have also asked city staff to provide monthly updates on negotiations with the trades council, and to come back to the council in February for a comprehensive update on a new agreement.
Van Den Heuvel told Lookout he hopes that both parties can reach a positive outcome. “Unfortunately, construction workers are too often told, ‘Don’t raise your voice. Get back to work, and if you want to speak up again, we’ll fire you,'” he said. “And that’s what just happened here tonight.”
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