A group of construction companies plans to haul the Orange County government into court and before the voters over its agreement to use union labor to build the proposed El Toro airport.
The Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction, a statewide group of non-unionized contractors, announced it will file a lawsuit against the Orange County government for approving a project labor agreement (PLA) and will also sponsor a ballot initiative to overturn the agreement.
The agreement calls for labor unions to provide 85% of the workers needed to build county-sponsored projects through 2005. The biggest county project, by far, is the proposed commercial airport at El Toro, which is projected to cost $1 billion to get up and running by 2005.
“We believe the PLA violates current law,” said Eric Christen, director of the coalition, because the OC agreement does not specify which projects it will apply to.
The group is interviewing two lawyers to handle the case, one based in Orange County and the other in San Diego, Christen said, but he declined to reveal their names.
The coalition also will try to qualify a ballot measure for the 2002 election to ask voters to overturn the agreement, Christen said, and the group will support two candidates in that election against supervisors Cynthia Coad and Jim Silva, who voted for the labor plan. Christen said he has found a candidate to run against Coad, but declined to say whom.
Project labor agreements, which are often used on the East Coast, have been gaining in California, where in the last three years, at least 32 have been signed. Agreements are in place for airport projects in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose, for projects in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and for the South Sacramento Corridor Light Rail Project.
Entities that agree to the labor pacts often do so as a way to enlist labor support to push controversial projects through the political process, not only locally, but also in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.
