Everett approves first project labor agreement with union groups

Published 1:48 pm Friday, September 5, 2025

EVERETT — Everett approved its first ever project labor agreement with union groups on Wednesday as part of an effort to build a large stormwater facility along Port Gardner Bay.

Project labor agreements are collective bargaining agreements between a municipality, contractors and workers for a specific project that binds pay to prevailing wage while including apprenticeship opportunities and priority hiring for local workers. Workers agree not to go on strike or stop work until the project is complete.

Government bodies like the city of Seattle and King County have previously used project labor agreements for construction work.

The agreement, which will govern the construction of the Port Gardner Storage Facility, includes a goal for apprentices to perform at least 15 percent of labor hours on the project and gives hiring priority to workers from Snohomish County.

Some council members said the use of project labor agreements was a long time coming.

“This is a really big step in ensuring that we are utilizing our tax dollars where our values are, and making sure that our local economy and our local community is going to thrive,” council member Mary Fosse said Wednesday.

City staff and union leaders said negotiations on the agreement went smoothly.

“As far as negotiations go, the one with Everett has been the easiest, the most professional, the most straightforward. Everybody had their game face on, everybody was there to do a job: To come up with something beneficial to all partners, including the taxpayers,” said Brian Johnson, the president of Local 86 Ironworkers and the president of the Northwest Washington Building and Construction Trades Council, in an interview Friday. Johnson helped negotiate the project labor agreement for local labor groups.

In 2019, the city approved a resolution outlining a process to evaluate whether project labor agreements may be considered on major construction projects over $5 million.

Later, other council members attempted to require project labor agreements for major city construction projects. In 2022, council member Liz Vogeli put forward an ordinance that would have required project labor agreements to be put in place for city projects costing over $5 million. Representatives from union groups said the bill would have brought important benefits to local workers.

After the council voted 4-3 to approve it, Mayor Cassie Franklin vetoed the legislation. At that time, Franklin said she vetoed the ordinance due to what she saw as possible negative implications of implementing it, including potential impacts to the city budget and the lack of project-by-project analysis as to whether the agreements would serve the public interest.

That was the only time Franklin has exercised her power to veto council legislation.

The Port Gardner Storage Facility, expected to cost over $200 million in total, will help prevent combined sewer overflows which occur when intense rainfall strains Everett’s sewer system, sending wastewater into the Snohomish River or Port Gardner Bay. That occurs because the north end of the city uses combined sewer systems that collect rainwater, sewage and wastewater in the same pipes.

Those overflows, if they occur, can contain bacteria and debris that could harm people and animals. Building the new 8-million gallon facility will help store excess rainwater during major storms and prevent those overflows from happening.

Everett began building its combined sewer system starting in the late 1800s. Much of south Everett uses a separated sewer system, with different pipes for rainwater and sewage.

The city has already reduced its combined sewer overflows by 95% since the late 1980s, according to a city public works document. In 2015, the state Department of Ecology ordered the city to reduce sewer overflows as much as possible by 2027.

The Port Gardner Storage Facility is one of a number of massive public works projects needed to update the city’s water and sewer systems, which serve residents across Snohomish County. Those upgrades, along with a recent increase in construction costs, were reasons behind a water and sewer rate increase the City Council approved in January.

Everett’s water system serves about 657,000 people. The sewer system serves over 180,000 people.

The city plans to also utilize a project labor agreement on the second phase of the Reservoir 3 Replacement Project, a replacement of a 100-year-old reservoir that could fail if a major earthquake were to strike, city studies previously found. That project is expected to cost $80 million in total, and construction of phase two is expected to begin in 2026.

Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.