California construction trade unions continue to protect the environment from the scourges of renewable energy and infill development. A chart below provides examples of their achievements for the planet in 2015. Meanwhile, 2015 ends with the annual chatter at the state capitol that “maybe next year” will be the year that the California legislature amends the California Environmental Quality...

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is a labor issue. That’s why unions are prominent opponents of any amendments to CEQA that would restrict or prohibit using the law to achieve objectives not related to environmental protection. Unions routinely use CEQA as a tool to pressure public agencies and private developers (or their agents) to sign collective bargaining agreements, project labor...

Out of nowhere comes a new, well-funded champion of Mother Earth. A group called “Monterey County Residents for Responsible Development” has submitted two sets of letters and exhibits to Monterey County alleging serious deficiencies in its environmental review for the county’s first large solar photovoltaic power plant, the 280 megawatt California Flats. Obviously the Monterey...

Fairly or not, news media has recently brought negative public attention to the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, a $2.2 billion thermal solar power plant built under a union Project Labor Agreement in California’s Mojave Desert. Owners of Ivanpah (BrightSource Energy, NRG Energy, and Google) have applied for a $539 million tax credit to help...

A coalition of Sonoma County construction unions has failed in its effort to exploit California environmental laws to discourage the Petaluma City Council from approving the proposed Riverfront Mixed-Use Project. At 1:00 am today (July 22, 2014), the Petaluma City Council voted 5-2 to approve a Final Environmental Impact Report for this project, as required under the...

Perhaps the Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West deserves grudging praise and respect for refusing to bow to American idols. Few groups have the gumption to challenge or criticize Apple, Inc., one of America’s most admired corporations. Apple generally gets away with commercial activity that the Left would slam relentlessly if practiced by other...

Below is the first organized compilation of documents showing what appears to be an aggressive, deliberate union campaign to impede government approval of solar thermal power projects in California. (Organized documentation of extensive union interference with government approval of more traditional solar photovoltaic power projects in California will be released soon.) These innovative proposed solar...

Through relentless and tedious persistence and a willingness to disturb “the Establishment” of the country’s eighth most populous city, the Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction (based in California) has finally succeeded in obtaining and exposing a document revealing how the office of former San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders (a Republican) arranged a secret and...

Throughout California, unions routinely use the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) as a tool to block and delay proposed projects until the public or private developer accepts some sort of labor agreement. This is the big-time, highly-professional “greenmail.” At stake is the control of hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars. Such CEQA abuse is extensive but rarely...

For five months, the City of San Diego refused to give the public a Project Labor Agreement negotiated for its planned $520 million convention center expansion. This union agreement was reportedly the result of a backroom deal involving top union leaders, but multiple requests for it under the authority of the California Public Records Act failed to dislodge it. But today (April 23,...