The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors will be voting on a union Project Labor Agreement (PLA) that, among other discriminatory and anti-competitive things, explicitly excludes young African-American apprentices enrolled in non-union apprentice training programs.
The PLA was negotiated by County staff and trade unions, with no one else allowed to sit at the table. Unions comprise less than 20% of the greater Santa Barbra County construction workforce, meaning the PLA will result in more workers coming in from L.A. and San Francisco.
PLAs make it all but impossible for union-free construction workers and apprentices to be employed on any of the projects covered by them, which means that the 80+% of the local construction workforce that is union-free does not have the ability to work on these projects.
