Carpenters Protest New Pharmacy College

The Grim Reaper paid a visit to Elk Grove this week.

No, he wasn't picking up folks from the town's senior housing developments. In this case, the creepy character was a towering puppet brought out by the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council to protest the new California Northstate College of Pharmacy soon to be built on West Taron Drive.

Blogger snapped this photo of the protest near where Elk Grove Blvd meets I-5 and sent it to us with a message: What's going on? We called the Carpenters to find out.

"Unfortunately, the college is not requiring that contractor to pay area standard wages and benefits," said union spokesperson Paul Cohen. "When people do that it drives down the standards of the area construction workers, whether they’re members of the union or not."

Cohen said his group wasn't demanding that the college hire union workers, but simply that they commit to paying the prevailing wage set by the California Department of Industrial Relations—about $30 per hour for a carpenter in Sacramento County—plus benefits. (The rate is not legally required on private projects.)

A lawyer for the college, which is relocating from Rancho Cordova, said it's premature to be protesting, however. While the company has chosen a general contractor, the Granite Bay-based Another Construction Company, that company has not yet requested bids from subcontractors, and construction won't start for months, said attorney Paul Wagstaffe.

"It would go against common sense to be out there protesting before the bidding has even started, especially in light of the fact that this contractor does hire union shops to do their work," he said.

Wagstaffe clarified that he didn't know whether the company would hire union workers for this project, but that they had done on some projects in the past.

Cohen said it's not about the contractor's record. "The school is the owner and they are the ones responsible for setting the standard [on construction projects], and in our view that extends to making a basic commitment about working conditions," he said. "They’ve lately been unresponsive, so we’ve decided to go ahead and use our first-amendment rights."

As for how long the protesters would be out there, Cohen wouldn't say. The union doesn't give advance notice for picketing, he said.

Located on the premises of the old AAA call center, the new college of pharmacy will serve several hundred students and will also likely share space with a sister school, a for-profit medical college.

The medical school project—perhaps the first such for-profit school in the country—is still going through the approval process with accreditors at the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, Wagstaffe said.

"We're hoping to be able to open by fall of 2013," he said.