Fairbanks would require union labor agreements on big borough projects

The Fairbanks North Star Borough would require contractors on any borough construction project over $3.5 million to sign a labor agreement with the local building trades council, under an ordinance three Assembly members introduced Thursday. The public hearing is Sept. 24.

The agreements, called community workforce agreements, set the terms of employment on a job before it starts. Under the Fairbanks version, every contractor and subcontractor on a qualifying project would have to sign on with the trades council and stay signed on for the duration, hire through union hiring halls, and fill at least 15 percent of total work hours with apprentices. The ordinance encourages hiring veterans, disadvantaged residents and people leaving incarceration through those halls, and bars splitting a project into smaller pieces to stay under the threshold. A five-member team, chaired by the public works director and including a trades council representative and a contractor representative, would decide project by project whether an agreement is required.

The ordinance is Anchorage's. Its operating provisions match Anchorage's 2018 community workforce agreement code almost word for word, with the borough's titles swapped in. Sponsors Patrick Roach, Garrett Armstrong and Nick LaJiness cite a shortage of skilled tradespeople and Anchorage and Juneau as examples.

Fairbanks did leave a few things out. Anchorage's version originally required the Assembly to review whether the policy was working every three years; Anchorage dropped that requirement itself this year, saying there had been too few qualifying projects to evaluate. The Fairbanks ordinance has no review, no sunset and no report back. It also drops a clause requiring employer contributions to apprenticeship training programs, replacing it with the 15 percent apprentice target.

Neither the ordinance nor the packet says how many borough projects exceed $3.5 million in a typical year, and there is no fiscal note.

The policy has a track record of conflict elsewhere in Alaska. Associated Builders and Contractors of Alaska and Associated General Contractors of Alaska have opposed community workforce agreement requirements on public projects, and sued the Anchorage School District in 2022 over its version, arguing it restricts competition and creates unequal hiring preferences. Building trades councils have signed similar agreements on other Alaska projects, including the Alaska LNG project. Neither the Fairbanks trades council nor the contractor associations have taken a position on this ordinance, and the borough administration has not commented.