Contractors, small-business owners tell Tacoma committee CWAs risk excluding local firms

At the Feb. 10 Economic Development Committee meeting in Tacoma, small-business owners and construction-industry groups urged the committee to proceed cautiously on community workforce agreements, saying the arrangements can exclude nonunion, women‑ and minority‑owned firms by increasing costs and compliance burdens.

"They have the right to come in and look at your books," said a small‑business commenter, describing how inspections and trust contributions can impose heavy administrative burdens on firms without large staffs. "We are paying benefits into a hole that we'll never fulfill," she added.

Why it matters: CWAs and project labor agreements (PLAs) are pre‑hire collective bargaining arrangements that can require union dispatch and set standards for wages, benefits, hours and safety. Proponents say CWAs help meet priority‑hire and apprenticeship goals; critics say they can push small, nonunion firms out of public contracting unless mitigations are built in.

Linda Foster, the city’s senior council policy analyst, gave committee members a technical primer on PHOs and CWAs, explaining how dispatch through union hiring halls and mandatory benefit contributions work. "A community workforce agreement ... is a pre‑hire collective bargaining agreement with one or more labor unions that establishes the terms and conditions of employment for a specific construction project," Foster said, noting Seattle’s model and a typical $5,000,000 threshold other cities use to trigger CWA rules.

Representatives of local and regional contractor associations emphasized the economic risks. "Policies that effectively exclude the majority of the industry reduce competition, limit participation and ultimately drive up costs," Carter Carlson of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Western Washington said.

Tim Atterberry of the Associated General Contractors reminded the committee that a 2018–19 Tacoma stakeholder task force examined CWAs and ‘‘decided to not endorse CWAs,’’ and he said the city has already analyzed many of the current concerns. "At the end of that committee's work, we decided to not endorse CWAs," he said, adding he recalled a "9 to 4 vote against CWAs."

Several small-business speakers described concrete harms: duplicated fringe/benefit payments when firms pay both their own plans and union trust funds; disrupted cash flow when contractors are paid on different schedules; and the administrative costs of compliance and audits. Shannon Boldejar of the All of Us Alliance summarized that CWAs "as currently applied in Washington State, create discriminatory, exclusionary, and often damaging barriers for many contractors and workers."

Staff response and next steps: Foster and committee leadership emphasized this meeting was an informational kickoff. Staff will provide follow‑up data and outreach: the community and economic development department will present outcomes from a 79‑page 2019 report and 25 recommendations at the Feb. 24 meeting, and the committee chair said she will convene stakeholder roundtables with union and nonunion contractors, WMBE firms, apprenticeship groups and others to gather input.

No policy or vote was taken; members said they want more data on how many Tacoma projects would pass a chosen threshold, the budgetary impacts of mitigation options, and possible measures to help small firms compete under any future CWA or PHO.

The committee closed the item noting a continuing conversation and scheduled further briefings and outreach.