Hello Brothers and Sisters,

Hope you all are doing well! On Tuesday afternoon March 4^th, 2025 myself and eight other Business Representatives from District Council 16 attended a school board meeting for the State Center Community College District to support a Resolution brought forth by Trustees Danielle Parra and Robert Fuentes. The resolution brought forward demanded that State Center Community College Administration enter into negotiations with the Fresno, Madera, Tulare, Kings Building Trades for a Project Labor Agreement.

There was a lot of opposition to the resolution including the Association of Building Contractors aka ABC and many Non-Union Contractors. The ABC went as far as accusing Unions of Wage Theft through using Project Labor Agreements because the they have to pay into our Trust Funds on their Core Workers for the period of the PLA. WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP! When I had the opportunity to speak, I reminded the Trustees and those in attendance that the Unions Total package of wages typically set the prevailing wage for the craft they represent through collective bargaining. So, in fact Unions not only protect their members but also the nonunion workers performing work on public works projects because without us there would be no prevailing wage.

In addition, I made a point to emphasize that the ABC and their AFFALIATES spend thousands of dollars every year lobbying for the removal of the laws that require prevailing wages on public works projects. Regional Director Troy Notarangelo during his speech drove home the fact that the difference between Unions and the ABC is that Unions represent workers and ABC represents Employers and a very small number of employers at that. And also, while Union Joint Apprenticeships graduate over 100 apprentices per year the ABC on average graduate about 11. Business Representative Trevor Long spoke to the benefits of Project Labor Agreements such as Skilled and Trained, On Time and under budget and labor Rest.

After all was said from those for and against and some live discussion between the Trustees in favor and opposed there was a call for the vote with Trustees Parra, Fuentes, Gomez and Rodriguez voting AYE and Trustees Ikeda, Johnson, and Ewell III voting NAY. The resolution passed and we will now enter into negotiations!!!! There is a lot of work ahead of us but securing a PLA with State Center will assure many hours of work for our members. Thank you to all the Bay Area Rep’s that came over to help with our cause. Of note we are currently in negotiations with Fresno Unified School District on a PLA, I will update you on that as the details get resolved.

Work hard and Safe

Jeff Roberts

RD/DC16/LU294/IUPAT