California State Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is still talking about changes to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) as the legislature works through its last two weeks in session in 2013. His vehicle for CEQA amendments – Senate Bill 731 – is still alive. It contains language that would supposedly help developers of urban...

Earlier this week, www.UnionWatch.org posted the article Did Unions Hasten Demise of California’s Solar Thermal Power Plants? For the first time, the public can examine a comprehensive compilation of specific evidence showing how construction trade unions have exploited the state’s environmental protection laws to impede licensing of proposed solar thermal power plants at the California Energy Commission. But what about proposed solar photovoltaic power...

Excerpts from four documents (obtained from California’s Administrative Office of the Courts on June 5, 2013 through a public records request) reveal the successful behind-the-scenes plot within the California court system involving top staff of the Administrative Office of the Courts and the Judicial Council to give construction trade unions monopoly control of the $586 million new San Diego County Central Courthouse with a Project Labor Agreement. Although...

On May 28, 2013, the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure for the U.S. House of Representatives held a field hearing in Madera, California on oversight of the California High-Speed Rail project. Unlike San Francisco, where 78.4% of voters approved Proposition 1A in November 2008 to authorize borrowing...

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...

Stopping the union political agenda on the state and local level in California entails the grinding, boring mundanity of ordinary grassroots organizing. It’s unglamorous. It’s not financially rewarding. And it certainly doesn’t enhance the professional or community reputation of anyone doing it. But it often works, as shown on May 15, 2013, when the elected...

Documents obtained on April 29, 2013 through a request under the authority of the California Public Records Act reveal behind-the-scenes maneuvering for a government mandate that construction companies sign a Project Labor Agreement with the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California as a condition of building California’s High-Speed Rail. Getting these records was not a simple task....

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,...

Can you guess which special interest group influenced many of the resolutions approved at the California Democratic Party convention on April 14, 2013? That’s right, unions. Here’s my annotated collection of the 2013 resolutions and the clean version of the resolutions on the California Democratic Party web site. (As the party web site says, “Click...

Within three days last week, elected boards of two of the four community college districts in Orange County, California voted on proposals to require their construction contractors to sign Project Labor Agreements with construction trade unions as a condition of work. 1. Rancho Santiago Community College District: Anaheim Hills, Garden Grove, Irvine, Orange, Santa Ana,...