Flash Report, December 12, 2005

One of California’s most visible new construction projects is the $6.8 million State Capitol security fence. No law requires this project to be done by contractors with unionized workers. But legislators are rigging it that way behind a veil of secrecy.

Last December, non-union contractors learned that California’s Department of General Services (DGS) planned to restrict bidding on the Capitol Park Safety and Security Improvements Project to contractors with unionized workers.

The DGS even conducted a survey of its past contractors to determine which ones were unionized and therefore acceptable for the work. It was rumored that powerful Democrats in the legislature had demanded that union workers perform all future construction at the Capitol, a desire resulting from past controversy.

In May 2002, construction-union officials had arrived at the Capitol for a conference and found a non-union contractor repainting the Capitol exterior. Outraged that this contractor was painting a building that unions presumed to own, several hundred union activists picketed the Capitol. Some Democrats cancelled committee hearings and joined the picket lines in solidarity with their major campaign donors.

The unions’ problem was that the non-union contractor could get the work done right at the best price. Its winning bid had been $2.45 million while the second-lowest bid was $3.7 million. Unions needed a quick solution to eliminate the more efficient non-union competition from bidding on the Capitol security fence. The answer was apparently to declare that the Senate Rules Committee owned the project and handle the bidding procedure under the table with irregular and restrictive rules.

In April 2005, a notice from a pre-selected union general contractor seeking subcontractors bluntly stated that the project was “to bid 100-percent union shop contractors only, at Owner’s request.” Non-union contractors began asking the DGS about the origins of this requirement.

“The non-union natives are restless at the Capitol,” stated one DGS official in an internal e-mail warning that the contractors “may get more vocal with the press.” At that time, a top official for the Senate Rules Committee directed the DGS to add a statement to bid documents that required contractors to employ an all-union workforce.

No law, regulation, or authority was cited for the union-only requirement. The DGS appeared to add the requirement by literally cutting and pasting a sentence into the original document stating “Workforce: contractor and subcontractors shall employ an all-union workforce.”

Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) of California, a trade association consisting predominantly of non-union contractors, began investigating how this union-only policy was implemented. ABC failed to find a public vote or legislative policy restricting Capitol construction contracts to unionized companies, despite the claim of a Senate Rules Committee official to the Sacramento Bee that such a policy existed.

In July, ABC used California’s Legislative Open Records Act to request that the Secretary of the Senate provide all documents and policies associated with the requirement to use an all-union workforce. He responded to ABC that correspondence between legislators and their staff is exempt from the Act, and “we are not in possession of any documents as described in your request, or the documents we do have fall within the above exemptions.”

The union-only restriction on construction contracts is not public policy. It was instituted internally, without public scrutiny or debate, by legislators and their staff, probably in consultation with union officials.

This is not how public policy should be established in California. The legislature should investigate this waste of taxpayers’ money and the brazen disregard for openness in government. Hopefully, a legislator—Republican or Democratic—will show enough courage to expose the truth.

Kevin Dayton is senior fellow in labor union studies at the California-based Pacific Research Institute and government affairs director for Associated Builders and Contractors of California. He can be reached at dayton@abc-cal.org