Community Fights San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) Project Labor Agreement

0 April 28, 2009  School Construction, Uncategorized

If you live in the San Diego area you have likely read newspaper articles or seen TV reports about a controversial 3-2 vote taken by the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) Board Members to direct staff to negotiate a PLA on construction work funded by Proposition S, a $2.1 billion construction bond passed by San Diego residents on 11/4/08.

The PLA may prevent local and qualified merit shop contractors like Ron Dion from Gould Electric and apprentices from merit shop training programs (subscription required, both editorials reprinted in post below) from building and working on SDUSD projects funded by Prop. S, but the final agreement has not been approved by the SDUSD board. 

Members of the local community are pressuring SDUSD members to ensure that the PLA does not contain costly and discriminatory provisions that will favor unions and eliminate merit shop contractors. It is estimated that the SDUSD residents will get almost $400 million less in construction as a result of the PLA.

SDUSD PLA will waste $400 million. Fewer SDUSD schools.

San Diego construction unions are lobbying their SDUSD political cronies hard for a union-only PLA. But they have a fight on their hands.

A coalition of trade associations (ABC of San Diego), builders, contractors, workers, free-enterprise advocates, taxpayer groups, and concerned citizens launched a public awarenes campaign called SavePropS which seeks to protect taxpayer money while maintaining an open and competitive bidding process on all construction contracts for Prop. S projects. 

SavePropS have created newspaper ads, raised two different billboards (#1 “Discrimination” and #2 “Waste”), organized protests, and launched a website to oppose the SDUSD union-only PLA.

sdusd-antipla-billboard-waste
The SDUSD PLA will likely build four schools for the price of five on $2.1 billion worth of construction.

sdusd-antipla-billboard-waste-discrimination

On May 26, elected school board officials will decide whether or not to adopt a union-only project stabilization agreement (a.k.a. a PLA) on the Proposition S $2.1 billion school bond.

To learn more and get involved, visit: www.saveprops.com

Update:

On Friday (4/24), San Diego GOP Party releasd this statement about PLAs and sent this mailer to tens of thousands of San Diego voters.

8.5x11_full_Vert.qxd

This post was written by and tagged Tags:, , , , , , , , ,

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *