October 21, 2026
By Matt Fleming
So wait: California’s construction unions are now against building stuff?
Construction unions formed an unholy alliance with their longtime enemy, environmentalists, to defeat a ballot measure and, apparently, winning requires burning down their own village. Their coalition recently launched an ad demonizing “dangerous” gas pipelines, industrial warehouses and data centers.
You know, the kinds of things that keep the construction union members employed and that they’ve championed for years.
It was only in May, in fact, when the State Building & Construction Trades Council Of California President Chris Hannan was calling for a data center in Kern County because it “exemplifies the kind of responsible investment California should encourage: one that supports critical infrastructure, creates good-paying jobs, strengthens workforce training, and delivers long-term economic benefits to the region.”
Jon Preciado, who leads the Southern California District Council of Laborers, was just a few years ago “excited to see the development of these industrial warehouses because it is bringing jobs into the Inland Empire that has been so desperately needed.” Now his group is spending $1 million dollars against them.
Pick a lane, guys!
Construction unions have put more than $10 million into the effort to defeat Proposition 45, a ballot measure seeking to streamline the California Environmental Quality Act, which is widely considered one of the top regulatory causes of the state’s housing crisis.
They’re fighting alongside Wendy Schmidt, the philanthropist wife of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and environmental groups that have put more than $18 million into this effort and have spent years opposing the very projects the Trades build. But they share an interest in keeping CEQA as is, as both wield its long, costly, cumbersome review process to their advantages.
Prop. 45 wouldn’t repeal CEQA; it would simply put deadlines on reviews and lawsuits for certain projects. Former governor and staunch environmentalist Jerry Brown famously called the elusive CEQA reform “the Lord’s work” because the law’s abuses drive up costs and delays for housing, energy and infrastructure, or kill projects outright.
Environmental groups want to preserve their ability to abuse the CEQA process to fight against development, while the unions use the process to gain leverage over negotiations to extract pro-union concessions.
But it’s new, and remarkably counterproductive, for the unions to demonize their own priorities, like data centers, to win at the ballot box – especially since Prop. 45 doesn’t have anything to do with data centers.
Prop. 45 covers nine categories of projects, and the No campaign’s entire line of attack rests on a very creative definition of “broadband.” Broadband is the cable and towers that bring internet service to your house, while data centers are warehouses full of servers – not the same thing.
The same is true for industrial warehouses and gas pipelines, which are also not part of the nine categories. The Trades have fought environmental groups for years over oil and gas production and the “Polluters Pay” agenda, and now they’re funding ads that treat pipelines as a threat.
In fact, Clean and Healthy California is the renamed version of the committee Schmidt bankrolled two years ago to defend an aggressive law banning new oil wells within 3,200 feet of homes, schools and hospitals, which was another step toward shutting down oil production in California. On the other side of that fight was the Trades, which backed the oil industry’s ballot measure to repeal the law, warning it would wipe out thousands of union jobs.
Besides giving significant money to the cause, unions are lending their name and credibility too. A “Sponsored by Labor, Health and Environmental Organizations” committee only works because labor is on the disclaimer.
The Trades want to protect their leverage in development negotiations by keeping CEQA as is. But they’re doing it at the expense of their members. Because of CEQA, there are fewer homes, power plants and roads for their members to build (and use).
Longer development times slow down production. One study in the Journal of Urban Economics found that cutting housing approval times in Los Angeles by 25% could have boosted production by nearly 13%, while another study found that in 2020, CEQA lawsuits targeted around 48,000 already-approved housing units, nearly half of everything the state produced that year.
Win or lose, construction unions will have spent millions training voters to think data centers and pipelines are dangerous, which probably suits Schmidt and company just fine. But someday the unions will want to build something again, and they’ll wonder why their projects poll somewhere between oral surgery and taxes.
It’s self-inflicted damage, paid for with members’ money. Whose side is leadership on?
Matt Fleming is a columnist with the Southern California News Group.