Building Unions Back Slow-Growth Measure : Newhall: Trades council protests developer’s hiring practices. The group says limits on construction would cut jobs that its members aren’t getting anyway.

One of the largest coalitions of construction unions in Los Angeles County accused a Santa Clarita developer Tuesday of anti-union tactics and took the unusual step of supporting a local slow-growth measure that would limit residential building.

About 250 members of the Los Angeles County Building & Construction Trades Council picketed Newhall Land & Farming Co.’s headquarters to protest what it contends is the firm’s use of out-of-state, non-union labor to build the area’s first regional mall, the Valencia Town Center. The trades council represents about 120,000 construction workers, about 35,000 of whom are unemployed, spokesman Richard N. Slawson said.

Officials also said the council will support a proposed growth-control measure that would allow only 475 new housing units to be built annually in Santa Clarita through 2002.

The council’s alliance with slow-growth proponents is “unusual, but these are weird times,” said Bob Milewsky, a spokesman for a carpenters union in the council. “Why should we help the developers defeat the measure? So they can make money anyway when they’re not hiring us?”

A spokeswoman for Newhall Land said the company does not discriminate against unions. Of the 70 contractors hired for the mall project so far, 26 are union shops and 64 are Southern California companies employing local workers, spokeswoman Marlee Lauffer said. The mall is scheduled to open this fall.

As for the trades council’s support of the as-yet unnamed slow-growth measure, which will appear on the April 14 ballot, “it’s unfortunate because the no-growth movement will have a tremendous impact on this valley . . . will reduce the number of construction jobs available,” Lauffer said.

During the two-hour protest, the crowd converged on Newhall Land’s headquarters, shouting, “If they don’t stop, we won’t shop.” Union officials attempted to enter the building to present Tom Lee, Newhall Land’s chief executive officer, with petitions demanding that the company use only local workers, but they were turned away by a security guard who said Lee was not there.

The crowd--including a protester dressed in a rat costume and wearing a sign saying he was Lee--then left peacefully, chanting: “Kill the Rat.”

Newhall Land has agreed to compile a list of local contractors available to do interior work for the 112 businesses that will rent space in the mall.