Unions Win Right to Big Santa Ana School Project

The bricks and mortar for the largest school building project in Orange County history will be laid exclusively by union hands, Santa Ana Unified board members decided Tuesday night.

In a controversial decision that continues a spate of victories for labor interests, all but one of the five board members voted to support a Project Labor Agreement, which would open bids to the $145 million in school-building plans only to union companies or nonunion contractors who hire through union hiring halls.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors earlier this year decided to use union labor on most future county public works projects, a move that critics say was part of a failed ploy to buy labor support for a new airport at El Toro.

Tuesday night’s school board meeting drew about 350 people, most of them union supporters, who frequently applauded and cheered the proceedings, and occasionally booed.

Supporters of the Santa Ana board’s decision were ecstatic.

“It’s a great idea. The biggest portion of our union membership [in Orange County] lives in the city of Santa Ana,” said Bill Fogarty, executive director of the Orange County Central Labor Council. “This is a responsible means to ensure that when work goes out . . . we make sure that people are getting decent wages, benefits and the things necessary to maintain a standard of living within the community.”

Opponents called the decision political and fiscally “stupid” and likely to boost construction costs.

“It’s obvious. When you reduce competition, you increase costs,” said Eric Christen of the Coalition for Fair Employment and Construction, which represents of building companies across the state. “Most people who work and will work on projects in Santa Ana don’t reside in the city. . . . And union halls are predicated on seniority piled on top of seniority, not on where you live.”

In November, Santa Ana voters approved a bond issue to help pay for construction of 11 elementary and two high schools, rewiring some campuses and adding libraries on others.

“The unions wait till this bond passes and come up with all these promises,” Christen said. “But this is going to ratchet up the costs of construction and severely diminish the buying power of these bond dollars.”

The only board member to vote against the agreement, Rosemarie Avila, said it was unfair, given that most workers in Orange County are not in unions.

“This is to me an issue of fairness,” she said. “Eighty percent of the county’s workers are nonunion. Why should one smaller group be given an advantage?”

Avila added, “These people justify their greed and lust for power by claiming they are helping little people move up. But they have so low an esteem of the little people they end up keeping them down.”

She said the agreement would engender a bevy of disputes between contractors and the unions, the unions and the school district, and contractors and the district. The agreement would also give labor interests far too much power, Avila said.

“It gives unions full power over contractors and workers,” she said. “The union decides who works and who doesn’t work, from the contractors to the workers.”

Board clerk Nativo Lopez, a staunch labor advocate, said the vote was about doing right by his constituents, the people who clean up bathrooms and do the bulk of the manual work at the schools and elsewhere. Lopez said many of these workers are parents of Santa Ana Unified students.

The political divisions caused by the labor issue have caused some to question Lopez’s ties to union interests. He has been criticized by Avila and others for a recent fund-raiser the Central Labor Council held for Lopez.

While Lopez has shrugged off the criticism, pointing to his long-standing union support, Avila has asked the district attorney’s office to investigate the fund-raiser to see whether a conflict of interest exists.

“I asked whether it was legal for Nativo to ask for this item to pass--which would be a huge financial boost for unions--while he scheduled a fund-raiser the week before the vote,” Avila said.