The Supervisors’ Curious Deal With Organized Labor

It’s hard to imagine a more unlikely union: Orange County’s heavily starched Republican Board of Supervisors exchanging vows with Southern California’s sweat-streaked labor groups.

Despite the county’s traditional disdain for organized labor, the board in January approved a landmark pact that guaranteed union workers will be used on major public works projects for the next five years.

Outraged residents, local GOP leaders and nonunion contractors have been venting ever since, apoplectic about a deal they say circumvented the county’s usual negotiating process and still remains shrouded in secrecy.

Just as striking was the three-member majority that voted for the labor agreement: all Republicans, including a supervisor once targeted for recall by the Westminster firefighters union and another who campaigned to restrict political contributions made by organized labor.

Union leaders sent flowers to all three on Valentine’s Day.

“There’s a message there,” said Supervisor Tom Wilson, who joined Supervisor Todd Spitzer and abstained because they said they didn’t have enough information to make an informed decision. “It’s a mistake, and a very bad policy decision. I think it was made on a different agenda than good government.”

That agenda is the proposed El Toro airport, a project that has given birth to the most radioactive local initiative on the March 7 ballot: Measure F, a political pillow created to smother the airport.

South County leaders opposed to the airport called the labor agreement a marriage of convenience and money. They said the board’s pro-airport, three-member majority--Supervisors Charles V. Smith, Jim Silva and Cynthia Coad--simply coveted a powerful ally to defeat Measure F and save their plans for a new international airport.

“Nothing surprises me anymore. They’re Republicans!” said Irvine City Councilman Mike Ward, who opposes El Toro. “I can’t believe they would go to this extreme in order to shove an airport down the throat of South County.”

Smith, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, dismissed the allegations of collusion as laughable.

“All the anti-airport people look at this as an undercover way to get support for the airport,” Smith said. “That’s their mind-set.”

Smith said he supported the labor pact because it guaranteed quality work and included a no-strike provision, but he acknowledges one of the side benefits was that the unions “may become more active in their support of the airport.”

Union leader Michael Potts, head of the Allied Orange County Building Trades Council, said the unions have always opposed Measure F, which they consider a job killer. If approved by voters March 7, the initiative would require two-thirds of county voters to approve new airports, large jails near homes and hazardous-waste landfills.

Potts said he’s been pestering the county for a labor deal for more than a decade, since the county has historically given pro-union contractors the cold shoulder, but his advances have been rebuffed until this year.

“I was very, very interested in it,” Smith said. “I can’t take credit for it myself--there were a lot of people involved. But I did encourage discussion on it. Things just started to fall into place.”

South County leaders now bad-mouthing the labor agreement may have unwittingly helped the unions land the labor pact with the county, according to labor officials involved in the negotiations.

Before county officials and the unions began serious negotiations in the fall, anti-El Toro advocates tried to court the unions into supporting the non-aviation Millennium Plan, a mixed-use proposal that includes a grand public park.

Those talks stalled when Measure F was crafted last spring but were revived in November when Potts sat down with Ward and fellow Irvine City Councilman Larry Agran. It was then that Potts asked if the anti-airport leaders could sweeten the pot.

“They wanted to have South County [cities] more open to union contracts, but we couldn’t promise them anything,” Ward said.

Agran Understands Union’s Position

Agran said he offered to give the unions an opportunity to express their concerns to officials in South County cities, but “that clearly wasn’t good enough.”

One of the biggest obstacles was the vehement, anti-union stance of many of South County’s city councils, Agran and Ward said.

“They were out to cut the best deal they could with the county. I understand that,” said Agran, who has always been friendly to organized labor. “They used this as an opportunity to get the sweetest deal they could with the county, something they never would have gotten.”

Both Smith and Coad insist the labor agreement was in no way connected to El Toro, saying the deal was attractive because it guaranteed a supply of skilled local workers and imposed substantial fines for work stoppages or strikes.

But Patricia DeAngelis, who negotiated a project labor agreement for San Francisco’s airport and successfully defended it before the state Supreme Court, called the Orange County agreement “somewhat unusual.”

Most project labor agreements are limited to specific public works projects, unlike the county’s open-ended five-year deal, which is tied to the overall cost of a proposed construction contract, she said.

“I haven’t seen that in other project labor agreements in other parts of the country,” DeAngelis said.

That’s the type of information that Wilson, an El Toro opponent, said he never received from county staff. He remains in the dark about who was involved in cutting the deal and how the negotiations unfolded. While he received some basic background documents, his request for those details has been largely ignored by county staff.

When the vote was taken Jan. 11, Wilson asked Smith to delay the decision until both he and Spitzer could learn more about the agreement and its potential ramifications, but his request was denied.

“Any other agenda item of this significance would have been aired in public,” Wilson said.

Skepticism is the catch phrase of many Orange County nonunion contractors, who say the labor pact excludes more than 80% of the county’s contractors from participating in county public works projects.

“There’s never been a negotiation like this before, at least that I’ve heard about,” said Lisa Miller of Shellmaker Inc., a Newport Beach engineering and dredging firm that’s had several public works contracts.

Consummation of the agreement came after months of hushed negotiations that circumvented the county’s Public Facilities and Resources Department, which has traditionally negotiated public works contracts.

Instead, Susan Paul, the county’s head of human resources, was tapped to be the county’s chief negotiator. Paul has negotiated labor contract with county employee unions but apparently has no experience negotiating public works contracts.

“She doesn’t have a clue about how construction contracts are made,” said Wayne Linholm of Hensel Phelps Construction in Irvine, who met with Paul last week.

Several attempts to reach Paul were unsuccessful.

H.R. Director’s Role in the Negotiations

Smith said Paul is a capable negotiator and respected by both the unions and county leadership. Plus, unlike contract officials in the county’s public facilities department, she is well-versed in the intricate state and federal labor laws that dictate how such deals must be drawn up, he said.

“She’s our chief labor negotiator, so she was the logical choice,” Smith said.

Still, many county department heads also were left in the dark about the negotiations, even though the agreement will have a major effect on their budgets. It wasn’t until after the Jan. 11 vote that Paul met with county department heads to discuss the labor pact. At that time, she was peppered with questions but provided almost no details, according to a county employee who attended the meeting.

“There were a lot of people who were left out of the process,” Wilson said. “It just makes me skeptical the way this took place.”

The 5-year labor pact requires that union workers make up at least 85% of the work force on new major public works projects--specifically all general contracts priced at $225,000 or more and all specialty contracts worth $15,000 or more.

Along with the proposed construction of El Toro airport and proposed expansion of the Theo Lacy jail, the agreement covers everything from the remodeling of fire stations to major air-conditioning and landscaping contracts.

The workers will be guaranteed the prevailing wage in exchange for promising not to strike. The unions also agreed to use as many Orange County union members as possible.

The unions covered by the agreement include the Teamsters and organizations representing ironworkers, carpenters, electricians, roofers, bricklayers and other trade workers.

Fred Young, who represents the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 12, acknowledged that nailing down such a sweeping labor pact in conservative Orange County was a “pleasant surprise.”

The deal made perfect sense, he said. The county is required by law to pay prevailing wages in public works contracts anyway and, with the agreement, it ensures that projects won’t be delayed by work stoppages.

“There were no ‘no’ votes, so the agreement can’t be all that bad,” said Young, who helped to negotiate the deal with his union’s district supervisor, William C. Waggoner.

During the negotiations, which consisted of about a half-dozen meetings in November and December, there was never any discussion of a quid pro quo linking the labor pact to the unions’ opposition to Measure F, Young said.

However, county officials made it clear that defeating Measure F, and moving forward with the El Toro airport, was a top priority. “I’m sure they wanted the support of organized labor--anyone else they can pick up,” Young said.

After the supervisors approved the pact, the unions began to mobilize to kill Measure F, including contacting union members and campaigning door to door, Young said.

“We’re doing everything we can to get out the vote,” said Young, who lives in Anaheim Hills and supports El Toro despite living under the airport’s proposed flight path.

Times Staff Writers Jean O. Pasco and David Reyes contributed to this report.