Speaking Out on Sundt
April 5th, 2024 | Isaac Burge, Editor
In mid-February, members of the Carpenters Union came to UC Merced with the intention of drawing attention to Sundt Construction, a company that has been accused of wage theft, worker endangerment, and other irresponsible practices. They’re urging UC Merced to disqualify Sundt as a potential contractor to build the new housing project currently being developed: the Promise Housing Project.
Image credit: Mitchell David Vinciguerra, Organizer for the NorCal Carpenters Union
The Promise Housing Project is a new plan to add more student housing to campus, specifically aimed at older, continuing, and transfer students. The new project, developed in conjunction with Merced College, aims to add about 800 more beds to house UC Merced’s rapidly-growing student population.
Sundt Construction is one of the contractors on the shortlist for the Promise Housing project, which means they could be hired to build it. However, the Carpenters Union believes that Sundt should be disqualified in the pre-qualification stage of the process.
“We just want to see responsible bidders,” says Eugene Morse, a representative for Local Union 152. Local Union 152 is part of the larger Nor Cal Carpenters Union, composed of 22 local unions spread out across the state. 152 is made up of carpenters from several communities in the Central Valley, including Merced.
The Promise Housing project is what draws the Union’s attention to UC Merced recently, but this isn’t the first time they’ve come to a college campus to speak out about Sundt Construction. In fact, this effort has been going on for over a decade.
In 2014, Local Union 46, also part of the Nor Cal Carpenters Union and serving the Sacramento area, spoke out against Sundt Construction on multiple campuses. The labor dispute concerned the construction of Chico State’s Sutter Hall, to expand student housing options. An audit report conducted in 2012 found that the construction costs for the project had been marked up and inflated by several thousand dollars. In the year 2014 alone, Union 46 visited Chico State, CSU East Bay (California State University East Bay), and Sonoma State.
Sundt has incurred several thousand dollars in OSHA violation penalties, some of which were serious violations. These are defined by OSHA as “[…] when the workplace hazard could cause an accident or illness that would most likely result in death or serious physical harm.” They have also received multiple Civil Wage and Penalty Assessments from the Department of Industrial Relations, including one issued against Sundt and its subcontractor regarding work done at UC Merced.
In 2016, Sundt was hired on as the primary contractor to build UC Merced’s Classroom and Office Building 2 (COB2). The Labor Commissioner found that Sundt had failed to pay more than $5,000 in wages that were owed to the workers, and issued another over $5,000 dollars in penalties.
More recently in 2018, the UC Regents filed a breach of civil contract suit against Sundt for water intrusion as a result of work done at UC Davis. The Regents claimed to have done a thorough investigation into the unsuccessful repairs by Sundt, and ended up settling the suit for $26.5 million dollars.
Sundt’s work isn’t limited to California. In 2021, they also constructed a pool for ASU (Arizona State University) and were sued by the Arizona Board of Regents on the basis of multiple code violations that caused a significant amount of damage. The pool was deemed unsafe to use and was closed.
On the basis of these incidents (and others), the Carpenters Union is strongly encouraging UC Merced to disqualify Sundt from the bidding process and to remove them from the shortlist. If Sundt were to be disqualified from the bidding process, they would not receive the opportunity to be contracted to build the new Promise Housing.
"We believe knowledge is key,” says Morse. “Just making the university aware of Sundt's past practices… that's the main focus of the campaign."
