PAGE 2 | April 21, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
...Managers Revolt: Portland may scrap union-led CBA
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The old template, known as
the Community Benefits Agree-
ment (CBA), was crafted by a
broad labor-community coali-
tion, the Metropolitan Alliance
for Workforce Equity. It com-
mitted general contractors,
unions, minority contractors,
community groups, workforce
training groups and pre-appren-
ticeship programs to work to-
gether to hit ambitious numeric
targets for the participation of
women and minorities — as ap-
prentices, journeymen, and sub-
contractors — on City-funded
construction projects.
The new template, entitled
the Community Equity and In-
clusion Plan (CEIP), was crafted
by a work group of city man-
agers, including Office of Eq-
uity and Human Rights director
Dante James, chief procurement
officer Christine Moody, deputy
city attorney Molly Washington,
and the heads of City infrastruc-
ture bureaus like water, trans-
portation, and sewer.
As such, it’s a construction
contract written by city man-
agers with little or no experience
in construction. The result is a
marvel of management-speak,
full of redundant and impenetra-
bly vague language, and fre-
“[City managers] conspired together to cre-
ate a low-road approach that discounts the
value of union labor to the point where it’s
offensive.”
— Willy Myers, executive secretary-treasurer,
Columbia-Pacific Building Trades Council
quently lacking clarity about
who’s responsible for what.
Here’s Article 7.3, Section B,
Subsection 1, item i, sub-item
(c): “Information shall be posted
on the Contractor’s website, or
to a shared website approved by
the Owner, to facilitate assess-
ment of the interest of
D/M/W/ESBs for the Work on
the Project.” Much of the docu-
ment reads like that.
But beyond style and com-
prehensibility, unions and com-
munity allies are raising a num-
ber of specific objections to the
CEIP, such as:
■ It creates a new 9-to-15-member
Community Equity and Inclusion
Committee (CEIC), but unlike the CBA’s
labor-management-community oversight
committee, the CEIC would be advisory
only, meet just four times a year, and
would be appointed by the city’s chief
administrative officer, Equity Director
(Dante James) and an unspecified
infrastructure bureau director.
■ It makes no mention of a 1 percent for
equity fund to pay for pre-apprenticeship
programs and technical assistance for
minority contractors; that’s supposedly
going to be addressed through a separate
policy that has yet to be revealed.
■ Unions (and pre-apprenticeship
organizations) had no role in crafting the
CEIP, and they aren’t signatory parties to it.
Instead, they’re supposed to sign an
Exhibit A “Partnership Agreement” that
they had no hand in negotiating.
That last item is significant,
where unions are concerned. In
a Jan. 16 letter to Dante James,
the Pacific Northwest Council
of Carpenters, Operating Engi-
neers Local 701 and the Colum-
bia-Pacific Building Trades
Council explained that many la-
bor unions would face signifi-
cant exposure to lawsuits from
members if they agreed to dis-
patch specifically women and
minority workers in the absence
of a signed, collectively bar-
gained agreement with a con-
tractor. The CBA, as written,
served that function. But City
managers said it was unwieldy
to have so many signers.
“The idea was not to make
17, 18, 20 people all parties to a
contract,” City Equity Office di-
rector Dante James told the La-
bor Press. “That doesn’t make
any sense.”
Instead, in the CEIP, “building
trades, both union and non-
union” can sign a separate non-
binding “partnership agreement”
pledging to “make efforts to as-
sist the Contractor” in achieving
the goals. James said the CEIP
was created by synthesizing a
number of documents, including
the CBA, and then sending the
document out to “over 44 organ-
izations and individuals” for
feedback.
But that’s only after a number
of organizations complained
they were being left out. When
City staff presented a list of or-
ganizations they were going to
reach out to last October to the
City’s Fair Contracting Forum,
not one of the dozens of labor
unions, pre-apprenticeship pro-
grams, or community groups
that had participated in creating
the CBA was on the list.
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