Our PLAs are stronger than ever

By Kevin Ferreira
Executive Director, Sacramento-Sierra’s BCTC

I am proud to share some great news with our members. Our project labor agreements—the deals that put our people to work with fair pay and safe conditions—are stronger today than they have ever been.

Recently, we renewed our PLA with the Natomas Unified School District. Our first agreement with the District lasted four years and this time around we added another full year to the agreement. The extra year was the only change we needed to make, and it means more of our members can count on good jobs close to home for years to come. Steady work is what lets our families plan ahead, pay the bills and build a good life. This renewal delivers that.

I also want to highlight our ongoing Community Workforce and Training Agreement with Sacramento Regional Transit. This one is huge.

Right now, there are 15 projects in the pipeline under this agreement. Together, those projects are worth about $6 billion in construction value. Think about what that means for our members: years of work, thousands of hours and countless chances for our people to earn a paycheck and grow their skills, and it creates more opportunities for future members in our apprenticeship programs. These are the kinds of big projects that build careers, not just fill a single job. And every one of them will be built by trained, skilled union hands.

Finally, I want to highlight the brand-new UC Regents Community Workforce Agreement. This one is special because it is the first of its kind.

It is a single agreement that covers the entire University of California system, negotiated by the State Building and Construction Trades Council. The UC system runs campuses and hospitals all across California, and it has a long list of buildings that need to be built, fixed and modernized, including here in the Sacramento region.

This agreement means our union members will be the ones doing that work—on student housing, research labs, classrooms and health care buildings that serve people all over the state. A statewide deal like this has never happened before, and it opens the door to good jobs and apprenticeships for the next generation of workers leading to careers in our unions.

None of these wins happened by accident. They are the result of the hard work and dedication of everyone at the SSBCTC. Our team showed up, made the case and proved that union labor gets the job done on time and on budget. We are proud to deliver these agreements for you, our members.

But we are not done.

We will keep fighting to make sure our members are not just on the job, but working with the wages and conditions that every union member deserves. That is the promise of unions, and we intend to keep it.