Advocacy opposing 'top down' union organizing campaigns that seek to impose project labor agreements (PLAs)

QUESTIONS PRESENTED Chamber of Commerce v. Brown, 554 U.S. 60 (2008) holds that noncoercive labor speech is protected by the NLRA, and any state statute that interferes with such protected speech is preempted. Prior to the enactment of California’s SB 954 in 2017, Interpipe, through its Industry Advancement Fund (“IAF”), lobbied against Project Labor Agreements (“PLAs”), which are pre-hire collective bargaining agreements imposed “top down” on employees without their vote or consent. In contrast to Interpipe’s advocacy against PLAs, unions and IAF's that are funded by unionized employers lobby in favor of PLAs. Interpipe and other open shop contractors made contributions to their IAF, ABC-CCC, from 2005 through 2016. In 2017, SB 954 changed California’s prevailing wage laws to eliminate prevailing wage credits for contributions to IAF's unless they are required by a collective bargaining agreement. This effectively eliminated all of ABC-CCC’s funding and silenced its advocacy against PLAs. Union funded advocacy in favor of PLAs is unchanged under SB 954. The two issues presented by Interpipe include: 1. Does protected labor speech under Chamber of Commerce v. Brown include advocacy opposing “top down” union organizing campaigns that seek to impose project labor agreements (PLAs), thus providing a legal basis for Interpipe’s “as applied” NLRA preemption challenge to SB 954? li QUESTIONS PRESENTED — Continued 2. If Interpipe’s advocacy against PLAs is protected labor speech under Brown, does the Court’s “minimum labor standards” exception to NLRA preemption under Metropolitan Life v. Massachusetts override that NLRA protection so as to warrant the dismissal of Interpipe’s NLRA preemption claim?