OUR VIEW: Supervisors right to allow vote on labor agreements

By the North County Times Opinion staff — opinion@nctimes.com | Posted: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 12:01 am

Tuesday’s decision by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors to ask voters to put an open-bidding requirement into the county charter is a good one.

Proposed by 5th District Supervisor Bill Horn, the measure now on the November ballot would prohibit the county from entering into “project labor agreements,” also known as PLAs —- essentially deals that deliver all contracts in a jurisdiction to unionized firms, locking smaller and independent contractors out.

While the right for workers to unionize is an important one, the obverse is also true: Americans have a fundamental right to choose to work at nonunion employers as well. And to deny those firms the ability to even bid on public contracts is, at minimum, unfair.

It can also be expensive for taxpayers —- unionized firms can have higher costs, resulting in taxpayers paying more for the same work.

Besides, any time competition is reduced, the buyer is going to end up paying more.

While some have pointed out that the county already has a policy in place against such labor agreements, the policy can be changed with a simple majority vote of the Board of Supervisors. With voters having approved in June a public employee union-backed measure to implement term limits for the Board of Supervisors, it’s not difficult to imagine a future union-backed board trying to reward their private-sector union supporters with a new policy endorsing these labor agreements.

By allowing voters to vote on whether to ban “project labor agreements,” the current board is doing future boards a favor: providing them direct guidance from the voters on how they want the county to proceed.