Press Room - Press Release

Press Conference Called to Protest Union Greenmail Efforts in San Diego

Chula Vista Construction Workers, Local Construction Trade Association to Hold Informational Picket Outside Port Commission

Group will scold union leaders for scuttling Gaylord’s billion dollar Chula Vista Bayfront revitalization project, killing thousands of jobs. 

July 10, 2007 – SAN DIEGO, CA – Chula Vista construction workers and local representatives of the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) of San Diego trade association are set to hold union leaders accountable today outside the offices of the San Diego Port Commission.  Organizers will educate the commission how to better support development along the Chula Vista Bayfront in the future and not enable union leaders whose demands for a union-only Project Labor Agreement (PLA), forced Gaylord to cancel this project.

As part of one of the largest planning ventures in the United States, Gaylord Entertainment of Nashville, Tennessee, was set to invest almost $1 billion of its own money to construct a 2,000-room hotel – the largest in San Diego County – and convention center along the Chula Vista Bayfront.  The project would have created approximately 8,500 construction and service-industry jobs alone, boost the region’s vital tourist industry, and generate estimated tax revenues of over $400 million per year.

Gaylord had agreed to every union demand, including paying contractors union-level wages.  However, union leaders’ demand for union-only workers would have shut out the 90% of the local workforce that are non-union from the bidding process.  Analysts’ prediction that this PLA would have driven up costs by as much as $75 million made the project too expensive for Gaylord to pursue.

“It is remarkable that union leaders would kill a project that would have created thousands of new jobs just to serve their own narrow political agenda,” said George Hawkins, president of ABC’s San Diego chapter.  “PLA’s are a discriminatory tool of extortion – plain and simple.  They serve no purpose other than to create a union monopoly over the workforce and undermine competitive bidding practices, shutting out qualified local workers while bailing out union pension plans by requiring mandatory union membership.   Union workers were already guaranteed plenty of work on the Bayfront project without a PLA.  How much work are they going to get now that Gaylord has packed its bags?  None whatsoever.  How are union leaders going to explain themselves to their local workforce now?”

This press conference will take place from 8:30 a.m., Tuesday, July 10th, outside the Don L. Nay Port Administration Building, 3165 Pacific Highway, San Diego, California.