Mike Chamberlin with the Nevada Business Coalition wrote a really terrific explanation of Project Labor Agreements this morning on the NBC blog.
And why should something as bland-sounding as a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) matter to you? Because, as the Right to Work Foundation notes, those PLA's can cost you and I, as taxpayers, millions of dollars.
A project labor agreement requires all contractors, whether they are unionized or not, to subject themselves and their employees to unionization in order to work on a government-funded construction project. This is done by including a union collective bargaining agreement in a public construction project's bid specifications. In order to receive a contract, a contractor must sign the agreement and subject its employees to union control. ...As Chamberlin describes, this is exactly what the Clark County Commission is trying to do.
The use of a project labor agreement usually results in cost overruns and higher construction costs for taxpayers. Qualified non-union contractors who wish to make lower-cost bids, and employees who wish to work non-union, are locked out of the project. However, politicians and government officials continue to impose project labor agreements to reward the union officials that fund their political campaigns and keep them in power.
The unions’ only hope remaining was to use their political influence to force contractors to use union workers on public works projects. In 2009, a few months after unions spent more than $200,000 on just the four winning candidates in Clark County Commission races, the Commission took up a proposal to impose a PLA on every County construction project.There's a lot more good information at the NBC blog, so read the whole thing.
Only through the action of groups like the Associated Builders and Contractors, which were able to quickly mobilize a strong showing of opposition, was this attempt to impose the will of unions on the public stopped.
But that didn’t stop the unions, or their favorite politicians. Rather than a blanket PLA, they’ve been working on imposing PLA’s on individual projects, with the same ultimate effect.
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2 comments:
A deeper look at PLAs would be interesting. Do the unions even try to make the case that their presumably journeyman workforce would be so much more productive that this would more than offset and justify their higher cost? This is not beyond the realm of possibility. I have had many situations where I have paid a highly experienced and productive journeyman far more than the average Joe and had this pencil out quite nicely. I understand that this still should not justify private companies being forced to forego their freedom to hire who they want. I’m just curious if there is any justification given by the unions besides the obvious political ones.
"contractors who wish to make lower-cost bids, and employees who wish to work non-union, are locked out of the project"
This statement is absolutely false!
the SNWA contract that is being done is using more non union than it is union and its being done under a PLA. There are non-union contractors who swore they would never do a job under a PLA in open court and now they are doing PLA jobs and they have been for years. ABC claims that they don't have a problem with private jobs using a PLA and all over the country PLA's are being used on Private jobs. Even Wal-Mart and Toyota are building with PLA's why because they work. Why would anyone deny the county the right to use a proven tool that helps save money and puts qualified people who live in the community on those jobs...Union and non-union alike. Everyone on a jobsite has their "contract". The General Contractor, The subs, The engineering companies, the engineers... but traditionally LABOR has never had a contract. Well we're tired of getting run over and taken advantage of and it's time we had our contract too. We call it a Project Labor Agreement.
Darren
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