Labor Board Ruling Could Nix Chula Vista Bayfront Project

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published August 15, 2007 at 1:02 PM PDT

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

Officials at a contractors' association in San Diego say a new ruling by the National Labor Relations Board would be the death knell for a billion-dollar project on the Chula Vista Bayfront. KPBS repo

Officials at a contractors' association in San Diego say a new ruling by the National Labor Relations Board would be the death knell for a billion-dollar project on the Chula Vista Bayfront. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

Jim Ryan is with the Associated General Contractors of America , a non-union trade association. Ryan cites a ruling involving a New York power plant. The company was barred from signing an agreement to hire union workers exclusively. This is what the unions want from Gaylord Entertainment in Chula Vista.

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Ryan says someone will use the ruling to appeal any labor agreement in Chula Vista

Ryan : If it isn't us, it will be somebody else.

But labor analyst Ruben Garcia, of the California Western School of Law, says it's not at all clear that the recent ruling would apply in Chula Vista's case.

Garcia : But it is clear the Supreme Court has upheld project labor agreements in the past not unlike the one in Chula Vista where the city was using its own funds in the creation of the agreement.

Gaylord and the San Diego Port District continue to negotiate behind closed doors.

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Alison St John, KPBS News.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.