Long Beach harbor leaders may approve labor deal, port budget

Unionized contractors may soon gain an advantage when applying for roughly $717 million worth of Port of Long Beach projects expected to be accomplished over the next five years.

Long Beach’s Board of Harbor Commissioners is scheduled to vote Monday on a port-wide project labor agreement, a deal that would give an official preference to union workers in exchange for labor’s promise to refrain from striking or other activities that may delay construction projects around Port of Long Beach. The board, which sets Port of Long Beach policy, is also scheduled to vote on a budget for the coming fiscal year.

Project labor agreement

The port has already enacted project labor agreements laying out contracting rules for the Gerald Desmond Bridge Replacement project and different phases of the Middle Harbor Project, the latter being an extensive renovation of port facilities leased to Long Beach Container Terminal.

The deal, which would be made with the Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building & Trades Council, would set hiring and arbitration rules for port contractors and unions. The deal allows non-union contractors to have five “core” employees working on projects, but would otherwise require workers to have union representation.

“When they bid on contracts, the people they bring to work on the contracts will have to come from union hiring halls,” Port of Long Beach spokesman Art Wong said.

Hiring objectives laid out in the deal call for 40 percent of the hours performed by workers assigned to covered projects to live in Los Angeles or Orange counties. The deal also sets the goals of having 10 percent of work hours to be accomplished by veterans and 15 percent of job hours to go to disadvantaged workers, which refers to people enduring difficulties including homelessness, unemployment, or living on public benefits.

The deal also requires building trades unions to refer local residents to apprenticeship programs.

The Long Beach port’s managing director of engineering services, Douglas Thiessen, said during a mid-May harbor commission study session that project labor agreements executed for other port projects have resulted in labor disputes being settled without lingering job disruptions.

On the other side of the question, the executive director of a Poway-based group called the Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction said some firms that have done business with the Long Beach port in the past will be shut out of future contracts because their executives don’t want to comply with pro-union rules.

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Long Beach’s City Council approved a similar deal for projects valued at $500,000 or greater and not involving work in streets or the public right-of-way in April 2015.

Fiscal 2017 budget

Harbor commissioners are also scheduled to vote on a budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

The proposal outlines $768 million worth of spending for the Long Beach Harbor Department, which runs the Port of Long Beach.

The spending proposal would allocate more than $493 million to capital projects at the port. That figure is smaller than the $558 million amount port staffers presented to harbor commissioners earlier this month. The reduction reflects port staffers proposal to push some work to future budget years and to delete funding for unspecified projects from the Fiscal 2017 budget.

If commissioners approve the Harbor Department budget, it would be included within the full city budget proposal that would go before the City Council in late summer. The port, however, does not rely upon the general tax revenues that fund core city govement services like police, firefighting, parks or libraries.