‘Game-changer’ agreement with union for Fresno projects passed. Will Mayor Dyer veto?
The Fresno City Council on Thursday passed a citywide project labor agreement that supporters say will boost the workforce but detractors called “discriminatory.”
The agreement with the Fresno, Madera, Kings and Tulare Building and Construction Trades Council will go into effect in 120 days and includes apprenticeship opportunities and local hiring provisions. Councilmembers said they plan to bring forward in 90 days a complementary proposal to invest in Fresno businesses who hire Fresno residents.
The agreement drew harsh criticism from Fresno City Manager Thomas Esqueda, non-union workers and business groups such as the Fresno Chamber of Commerce, Central Valley Business Federation and the Associated Builders and Contractors of Northern California.
Local union workers spoke during public comment in support of the agreement and told the council how union membership and Fresno apprenticeships transformed their lives.
Pablo Villagrana, president of the Ironworkers Local 155 said he joined the union’s apprenticeship when he was 20. “I’ve been a union worker for 16 years, and in those 16 years, (I earned) a livable wage and great benefits that allowed me to help my mom buy her first home, and me buy my first home in a better area in Fresno to raise my kids,” he said.
The agreement passed 6-1, with Councilmember Garry Bredefeld voting no. Esqueda during the meeting hinted that Mayor Jerry Dyer intended to veto the agreement, but with the 6-1 vote any veto attempt would likely be overturned.
Councilmembers Esmeralda Soria and Luis Chavez highlighted the apprentice opportunities as reasons they pursued and supported the agreement.
“To me, that’s the biggest component of this, that pipeline that we’re working on,” Chavez said. “I think it will be a big game-changer for us.”
City manager’s opposition
Esqueda issued a memo Wednesday evening before the council meeting asking the council to postpone the vote to the Sept. 16 meeting. In the memo, he said the agreement as drafted did not serve the best interests of the city, its residents and local contractors.
The memo broke down various city projects and showed that while non-PLA projects employed higher numbers of residents within a 25-mile radius of the city, Fresno’s sole PLA project employed the highest number of residents who lived within city limits.
Esqueda requested the council amend the agreement so that contractors with headquarters in Fresno be exempted from the agreement. He said the core worker provision created another obstacle for local contractors to work with the city.
During Thursday’s meeting, Esqueda said the agreement as drafted was a “pay to play” policy.
“It’s stunning to me that we’re the fifth-largest city in the state, one of the top 40 in the nation, and we think so little of ourselves that we’ve got to bow to a special interest group,” he said. “To put our future of how we develop talent here in the city, I just — it is stunning to me that that’s the solution we’ve come to. It’s a classic case of a solution in search of a problem.”
The ABC of Northern California agreed with Esqueda and said it would have supported the agreement if it included a local exemption amendment.
“That’s all we’re asking — is for Fresno workers to be able to continue to build Fresno,” said Nicole Goehring, vice president of government and community affairs for ABC of Northern California.
Under the agreement, nearly 82% of Fresno construction professionals will be excluded from working on projects in their own backyard, Goehring said. She encouraged Dyer to veto the agreement.
UC Merced study
A policy brief published in January by UC Merced’s Community and Labor Center analyzed Fresno construction projects between 2013 and 2020 that would have qualified for a project labor agreement. The study found those projects would have supported an average of 215 full-time construction jobs each year, or a total of 1, 720 jobs.
Those jobs represent missed opportunities for stronger wages, career training and working conditions in one of the state’s lowest-income major cities, the brief concluded. The brief also cited research that compared similar union and nonunion jobs and found that union jobs in the San Joaquin Valley paid an additional average of $7,000 per worker annually.
Plus, the brief cited studies that showed project labor agreements delivered projects for cheaper.
“For a city aiming for broad prosperity, a municipal PLA policy would offer rich opportunity. The most recent Fresno General Plan ‘envisions Fresno as a vibrant, growing city, infused with a sense of heritage and community.’ This study finds that a municipal PLA for Fresno would benefit over two hundred construction jobs per year on average, along with benefits to construction, completion and skilled workforce training, toward city leaders’ goals of vibrant growth.”