By admin 
Proposition 45’s backers had hoped that construction labor unions, whose members would seemingly stand to benefit from an increase in new building in California, would join their campaign.
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Or, at the very least, the project’s architects say, they’d hoped the politically powerful unions would stay on the sidelines of what has turned into one of the fiercer election battles of the year.
“We want to build more things in California,” said California Building Industry Association President Dan Dunmoyer. “There is no question that Proposition 45 will create more jobs for labor.”
Instead, prominent unions, chief among them the State Building & Construction Trades Council of California, are not only opposing the measure but have poured money into the No campaign. They’re joined by California chapters of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and unions representing ironworkers, insulators and builders of elevators and escalators.
“The State Building Trades has consistently supported infrastructure projects that create good-paying jobs while respecting local communities and our natural resources,” said Chris Hannan, the council’s president, in a statement to The Sacramento Bee. “We oppose Prop. 45 because it would gut longstanding protections for public and environmental review, severely limiting the ability of communities and local governments to ensure major projects are built responsibly.”
The measure’s proponents see a different motivator, however. On Thursday, the Yes on Prop 45 campaign published research outlining a lucrative relationship between law firms that specialize in CEQA lawsuits and labor unions. From 2011 to 2025, public filings required of labor unions show just two law firms collected more than $88 million in legal fees from trade unions.
Neither of the firms — Adams Broadwell Joseph & Cardozo and Lozeau Drury — responded to requests for comment from The Bee. Adams Broadwell earned $68 million from unions in that time period, according to the Yes campaign, while Lozeau Drury earned a little more than $19 million. Both firms market themselves online as representing labor and environmental interests — and as CEQA experts.
The public filings to the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Department of Labor do not specify what that money paid for, beyond outlining them as legal fees.
“It’s dumbfounding that trades union leaders oppose a measure that creates tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs for their members while funneling tens of millions of dollars to law firms that profit from costly CEQA lawsuits at the expense of California’s affordability,” said Amelia Matier, a spokesperson for the Yes campaign, in a statement. “But these findings raise a troubling question: Why are union leaders siding with attorneys who profit from costly CEQA lawsuits instead of the workers who benefit from getting projects built?”
A spokesperson for the No on Proposition 45 campaign, Woody Little, called the allegations by Matier and the Yes campaign “desperation from a failing campaign.”
“It’s understandable that the data center builders, utilities and sprawl developers that are bankrolling Prop. 45 don’t want to talk about the substance of their Trump-esque ballot measure that guts California’s environmental protections, so instead they’re rolling out decade-old information that has absolutely nothing to do with Prop. 45,” Little said. “We think the voters are smart enough to know this is a nothingburger.”
Prop. 45 proponents say it would not apply to data centers, projects that have faced a widespread political backlash.
The alliance between labor unions and the environmental groups opposing Prop. 45 is yet another of the unique political pairings debate over the measure and CEQA has brought to the campaign trail this year. In California, the two groups align on some issues but have also clashed, largely when it came to debates over energy development and fossil fuel projects.
Unions also rely on CEQA
Arguments over how unions engage with CEQA are not new — its critics have long complained that labor unions are taking advantage of the environmental law. Former Gov. Jerry Brown raised the issue in 2016, when he told a UCLA magazine unions would always fight changes to the law.
“The unions won’t let you (reform CEQA) because they use it as a hammer to get project labor agreements,” he said. “The environmentalists like it because it’s the people’s document that you have to disclose all the impacts. And, of course, the developers have a problem because ‘impact.’ Boy, that’s a big word.”
But CEQA’s defenders say labor unions, like environmentalists, use the law to force more responsible development, and that claims of its misuse are overblown.
Adams Broadwell describes its labor practice as specializing in “drafting, negotiating, administering and enforcing construction industry prehire collective bargaining agreements.”
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Lozeau Drury says it has worked with labor organizations to ensure building projects follow environmental regulations to protect worker health from harmful pollutants.
Jennifer Hernandez, a longtime CEQA lawyer for the firm Holland Knight who has worked with the Yes campaign, said the two law firms often use the environmental law to get better labor agreements for contractors. If unions don’t like the terms a developer offers them, or if a housing project seeks to avoid a labor agreement, unions can threaten to slow a project using CEQA litigation, Hernandez said.
Avoiding getting tied up in CEQA litigation is a powerful motivator for developers to reach a deal, or improve the terms of one, with labor unions, she said.
“These lawsuits hit, they sometimes persuade judges to say ‘hey, study a little more, and by the way you can’t build anything until you do,’” Hernandez said. “You sign a labor agreement and they go away.”
Prop. 45 would place time limits on government agencies to complete permitting reviews and on courts to resolve CEQA-related lawsuits, as part of an effort to streamline approval for some projects under the measure. The measure’s opponents, a coalition of environmental, public health and labor organizations, say the measure tips the scales too far in favor of project approval and would strip protections and local control from California communities.
The more streamlined approval process would apply to eight categories of building projects — housing and public health developments, such as hospitals; clean energy; water infrastructure; schools including higher education facilities; public safety projects, including wildfire mitigation work like vegetation management; transportation; and broadband and digital access.
Prop. 45’s proponents say they included language that required those projects to comply with prevailing wage and skilled-workforce requirements that would make them guarantors of union jobs.
“We didn’t do this in a vacuum,” Dunmoyer with the Building Industry Association said. “We worked really hard to get (labor unions) hopefully supportive but at worst neutral.”
Dunmoyer said he thought the unions had largely come around to the ballot measure. But over the spring they changed their position and turned against it — he said he believes that happened after hearing from the law firms that benefit from CEQA litigation.
United Contractors, a trade association which represents civil engineering contractors that hire union labor, supports Proposition 45.
“We took our union partners’ concerns seriously and worked hard to understand them,” said the group’s president, Emily Cohen. “Ultimately, our members reached a different conclusion. We believe Proposition 45 provides a more predictable path to building the infrastructure Californians need, with labor protections that support that work.”
Changing allies
In a No on Proposition 45 ad released last month, opponents say the act would fast-track approval for industrial warehouses, gas lines and data centers. The ad lists as it top funders both the State Building and Construction Trades Council and Wendy Schmidt, the wife of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and a major donor to the No campaign.
Just two years ago, in 2024, Schmidt and the Trades Council were on opposite sides of a different ballot measure proposal — one over an oil industry effort to repeal a law banning oil and gas wells from being drilled too close to parks and schools. The Trades Council endorsed the campaign for repealing the law, according to Ballotpedia, while Schmidt spent heavily to defend it. The measure’s backers ultimately pulled it.
Dunmoyer said it was surprising to see the trades association paying for an ad that depicted data centers in a negative light, when labor organizations have argued for the facilities before because they will bring more union jobs.
“It’d be like me paying for ads attacking home builders,” he said.
But in his statement Hannan argued labor and environmentalists aren’t stopping development, just encouraging it be done safely.
“We make no apologies for standing up for good union jobs while also standing up for the communities where those projects are built,” he said. “California can and should do both.”
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