Last year, those driving up Coolidge were met with cows grazing on UC Santa Cruz’s East Meadow. Now, as students move onto campus for the new school year, they’ll be greeted by a fence wrapping around the Meadow displaying images of happy families.
Behind the fence, a construction crew mans bulldozers and moves dirt. This is not just a construction site, but also a site of lawsuits and delays.
On July 10, the NorCal Carpenters Union Local 505 sued the UC Regents for awarding a $143 million bid to W.E. O’Neil of NorCal, a non-union contractor. The building contractor was selected to build Phase 1 of Student Housing West, the new Family Student Housing complex on Hagar Drive. The union’s lawsuit claims the university gave the contractor an “unfair advantage” in the bidding process and thus violated state laws covering project bidding.
“We want to see fair bidding practices for projects that involve students’ money,” said Harvey McKeon, a field representative for Carpenters Union in an interview with City on a Hill Press. “If contractors are allowed to structurally avoid the truth on bids, that opens the floodgate to potentially lots of bad actors to take advantage of the system.”
The Hagar site, which has faced prior delays, is expected to be finished in late 2025. UCSC spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason wrote in an email to City on a Hill Press that further delays are not anticipated, even with ongoing lawsuits. The City of Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz County, and the Habitat and Watershed Caretakers all filed lawsuits against the university about the East Meadow construction and the Long Range Development Plan, but these three suits have since been combined into one lawsuit.
Documents obtained by City on a Hill Press detail a months-long legal dispute between Local 505, W.E. O’Neil of Norcal, and UCSC, resulting in the July lawsuit. W.E. O’Neil’s bidding documents were made public through Local 505’s lawsuit to the UC Regents. 
How Did W.E. O’Neil Secure The Bid?
W.E. O’Neil of NorCal was one of four contractors bidding for UCSC’s Student Housing West project. The other opposing contractors vying for the bid included Blach Construction, Devcon Construction, and Webcor Construction. Bidding for the project opened in January and ended in March, after which UCSC evaluated each of the contractors.
Based on each companies’ bid values and questionnaire responses, UCSC gave each contractor a “Best Value Score,” the lowest of which would be deemed the “best value” contractor. The evaluations from UCSC were included in Local 505’s lawsuit.
W.E. O’Neil of NorCal had the lowest bid value and score, solidifying them as UCSC’s most suitable candidate for the project.
In their bid documents, W.E. O’Neil of NorCal answered that it had no accidents resulting in a fatality on any of their projects within the last five years. However, on their bid, the contractor used a Los Angeles project owned by W.E. O’Neil of California as a comparable project, where a worker fatality occurred three years ago.
In their qualification questionnaire, the Los Angeles-based W.E. O’Neil of California was listed as the parent company of the Pleasanton-based W.E. O’Neil of NorCal, claiming that both corporations are “substantially the same organization.” Though both companies are legally different entities, because of this association, construction projects from W.E. O’Neil of California were used to qualify W.E. O’Neil of NorCal to build the project.
The worker fatality happened on July 15, 2021, when an energized overhead power line electrocuted workers holding rebar on the Los Angeles site run by Los Angeles-based W.E. O’Neil of California and Millennium Reinforcing, its subcontractor. In addition to the fatality, two other workers were hospitalized.
The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a willful citation against Millennium Reinforcing in January 2022 and a penalty of $112,500. W.E. O’Neil of California faces ongoing litigation for this worker fatality.
Ed Reiskin, UCSC’s chief financial officer and vice chancellor of finance, operations, and administration, denied Local 505’s appeal of W.E. O’Neil of Norcal’s bid on April 5. In his email to the union obtained by City on a Hill Press, Reiskin sides with W.E. O’Neil of Norcal, stating that the Pleasonton-based company and the Los Angeles-based company are “separate and distinct” legal entities.
“While it appears that there is some relation between the two companies, we do find persuasive the fact that the companies are separate legal entities,” wrote Reiskin in the email.
In attempts to reach Reiskin directly, City on a Hill Press was repeatedly redirected to UCSC spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason. Additionally, W.E. O’Neil representatives could not be reached for comment despite repeated attempts.
“I thought it was commendable of the University of California that they asked about a worker death on a job site in the past five years. It’s a shame that they seem to not have cared about whether the answer was true or not,” Harvey McKeon said.
On April 10, Local 505 filed its appeal against the contractor to the UC Construction Review Board. In their appeal, the union alleges “intentional deception” from W.E. O’Neil of NorCal, due to their failure to report the 2021 worker fatality on their parent company’s site and additional claims made against them on their pre-qualifying documents and bid documents. The appeal was denied later that month after a hearing on April 19.
ADCO and Wage Theft
In Local 505’s initial appeal to the university, they noted that in W.E. O’Neil of Norcal’s bidding documents, ADCO Drywall and Metal Framing, one of its subcontractors, has had at least one lawsuit accusing the company of wage theft, with one settlement totaling $1,274,500.
Gabriel Bañuelos, a previous ADCO Drywall worker, described himself as a victim of wage theft from the company during public comment at the July 17 UC Regents meeting.
“Trabajamos diez horas diarias y la compañía no nos pagó todas las horas. ADCO nos despidió cuando insistimos que nos pagaran,” Bañuelos said. “ADCO nos debe más de $9000 por los salarios pendientes y daños.”
Translation: “We worked 10 hours a day and the company did not pay us for all of those hours. ADCO fired us when we insisted they pay us … ADCO owes us over $9000 in pending salaries and damages.”*
City on a Hill Press obtained an email correspondence with UCSC in which a lawyer representing W.E. O’Neil of NorCal argued that because the lawsuit filed against ADCO Drywall was “commonplace in construction,” it was not enough to invalidate W.E. O’Neil of Norcal’s bid for the project.
“A critical number of residential construction sites are what I would describe as an economic crime scene,” said McKeon, when discussing the struggles construction workers face. “We have seen widespread wage theft in residential construction.”
When asked for comment on the pending lawsuit, Scott Hernandez-Jason wrote, “All contractors and service providers are responsible for the safety of their employees and for complying with OSHA standards while they are performing services on campus …. The campus was satisfied with the safety information that it received, including that Cal-OSHA did not issue any willful violations for the last 5 years.”
McKeon believes the integrity of the process, not just at UCSC, but UC- wide, is at stake with this case.
“The university did not engage with us meaningfully,” said McKeon during the July UC Regents meeting. “The UC’s motto is ‘Let there be light.’ It seemed to us like it was, ‘Let there be lies.’”
*Quote translated by City on a Hill Press staff
