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Press Release from Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction…
With Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District Now Ground Zero in Union PLA Battle, Area Voters Continue to Receive Details About PLA
Unions Scheme for a Monopoly of Work on $398 Million Prop V Bond Leads to Massive Voter Outreach
Santee, CA – For the third time in three weeks tens of thousands of voters in the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District have received a mailer educating them about the wasteful and discriminatory Project Labor Agreement (PLA) that the Board of Trustees is considering. Shortly after being elected Trustees Mary Kay Rosinski, Greg Barr, Edwin Hiel, and Debbie Justeson, in races funded exclusively by big labor special interests, began pushing for the PLA. “After being elected with hundreds of thousands of dollars in big labor money, while not raising any of their own money, these four began plotting ways to repay their union benefactors.” said Eric Christen, executive director of the Poway based Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction (CFEC). “This is pure quid pro quo and we are going to expose it, fight it, and hold them accountable.”
In a typical Project Labor Agreement, unions supply all workers (including apprentices). Fringe benefit payments from employers on behalf of workers are directed into union-affiliated trust funds. And workers pay union dues and fees.
Adopting a government-mandated Project Labor Agreement is contrary to specific language included in the district’s August 7, 2012 bond resolution. That language was meant to assure voters in the November 2012 election that the district wouldn’t require contractors to sign a union agreement as a condition of working on projects funded by the $398 million Proposition V bond measure. Here is the language:
(j) …the District will promote fair and open competition for all District construction projects so that all contractors and workers, whether union or non-union, are treated equally in the bidding and awarding of District construction contracts…
Those opposing the PLA are engaging in a full blown campaign to educate local citizens about just how it will discriminate against workers and reduce the value of the District’s $398 million Prop V construction bond by up to 20%. “CFEC and other stakeholders like the San Diego County Taxpayers Association have sent three mailers now educating voters about this Board’s scheme.” added Christen. “The next step in accountability is to punish any Trustee who actually votes for a PLA.” The latest CFEC mailer specifically targets Trustee Edwin Hiel who was served with recall papers at the meeting where this issue was first brought up three weeks ago.
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Comments 1
The GCCCD board members promised to the public, taxpayers, and local workers as a promotional condition of the bond measure passage, that all workers, regardless of affiliation, would have a fair chance to bid on the resulting work. That decision was already made! If the school board members, now go back on their word of honor to make a special deal and now exclude those not affiliated with unions, they are engaging in misappropriation of the public funds. Those board members should be immediately removed from office for dishonorable behavior as one would purge thieves, liars, robbers, and charlatans from any position of the public trust.
Scott H. Kidwell IBEW Electrician