Associated General Contractors’ Jim Ryan Threatens Lawsuit against Gaylord if the Developer Signs an Agreement with Local Workers
**For immediate release**
Contact:
Jen Badgley
(858) 569-8900 or (619) 957-4569
Ryan’s Claims About New York Project Labor Agreement Decision Wrong
Statement from Tom Lemmon, San Diego County Building & Construction Trades Council, AFL-CIO
“From the beginning, we informed members of the media, Mayor Cox, Port Commissioners and Chula Vista residents that corporate anti-worker front groups, such as Associated Builders and Contractors and Associated General Contractors, are at least partly to blame for Gaylord Entertainment’s sudden retreat from an agreement we had reached with them that protected competition and local workers.
Friday’s San Diego Business Journal article featuring Jim Ryan’s layman legal analysis about a New York project labor agreement case is all the proof the community needs to understand once and for all that this is an anti-worker mouthpiece that can’t be trusted.
In the article, Ryan follows the lead of his counterparts at Associated Builders and Contractors by making a clear extortion threat to sue Gaylord if it makes a legal commitment to hire Chula Vista and San Diego County workers first. This is particularly alarming because Ryan is a key figure behind an anti-worker smear campaign that falsely claimed we threatened Gaylord with a lawsuit.
However, what is most egregious is how Ryan is attempting to twist a ruling regarding a project labor agreement with completely different terms than the agreement Gaylord walked away from in January and apply it to the Gaylord project. Reporters should be aware that the National Labor Relations Board ruling simply applied a 1975 Supreme Court case to the facts of the New York agreement. It did not, in any way, change the overall legality of project labor agreements. The unique provisions of the New York project labor agreement simply didn’t meet the standards set by the Supreme Court, and that is why it was deemed inappropriate.
Project labor agreements are constantly challenged by corporate anti-worker groups, yet the agreements have been repeatedly upheld, most notably by the Supreme Court. Nothing in the New York decision will jeopardize our ability to negotiate a legally binding labor agreement that guarantees that if Gaylord wants $300 million in public money, local workers from Chula Vista and San Diego County will be hired first.
We urge the media to act responsibly and thoughtfully with regards to this story.”
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