Building Trades News

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Craft members in Orange County are currently constructing a new state-of-the-art Sherriff’s Academy that includes classrooms, a running track and mock village where recruits will practice their skills. This $20 million project is being build on 15 acres of the former Tustin Marine Corps air station. The work is being performed under a Project Labor Agreement between the Los Angeles/Orange County Building Trades Council and the Rancho Santiago Community College District.

"While there may be union crafts scattered throughout the various constructions projects on the former Marine base, the Sheriffs Training Academy is the only one that is an all union project," said Jim Adams, Business Representative with the LA/OC Building and Construction Trade Council. "That is because of the project labor agreement we negotiated with the Rancho Santiago CCD.

"Without the project labor agreement we would have had a lot of issues; the few problems that we did have were resolved very quickly," said Piedmont Brown, Business Agent with Iron Workers Local 433. "With a PLA in place, it freed me to go out and do organizing, instead of being out on the jobsite on jurisdictional or other issues.

The jurisdictional problems we had with the Carpenters were resolved very quickly, which allowed me to attend to my other duties which is organizing and finding work for our members."

When the facility is opened, it will increase the number of recruits who can be trained annually from 170 to 400, officials said.

The new facility will be built using money from $337million in Measure E bonds passed by the district’s voters in 2002 to improve the district’s two colleges: Santa Ana and Santiago Canyon.