Fresno City Council Again Voting to Give Unions a Monopoly on City Construction Contracts
As the massive California High-Speed Rail project winds down to the reality of failure, construction union officials who have Fresno within the territorial jurisdiction of their Master Labor Agreements are looking for new guaranteed work for the future. They need to cut the competition and keep the dues money and pension payments flowing in.
Getting the Fresno City Council to give them a Project Labor Agreement on future airport construction would help.
On March 7, 2019, the Fresno City Council will vote on a resolution directing city staff and the city attorney to prepare and negotiate a Project Labor Agreement for "Airport FATForward" projects. This is the $115 million Fresno Yosemite International Airport $115 million expansion officially announced on January 31, 2019.
Three members of the Fresno City Council have already signed up to "sponsor" this proposal. It is unclear if they're supporting it because they like government-mandated union monopolies or because unions warned them that the airport expansion would be blocked with environmental objections under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) unless they controlled the work.
Remember, in 2000 the Fresno City Council banned government-mandated Project Labor Agreements on city contracts, in 2014 the city council repealed the ban because they were coerced by a new state law that would have taken away its state funding, in 2016 the city council mandated its first Project Labor Agreement to help its case to win state funding for a program, and in 2019 it's mandating another Project Labor Agreement for the love of costly union monopolies. It’s the political evolution of California.
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