State Open Competition Legislation on the Move
Legislation promoting fair and open competition is gaining momentum in several state capitals. The Idaho Senate State Affairs Committee approved legislation on Jan. 26 that would prohibit state agencies and recipients of state grants from mandating the use of wasteful and discriminatory project labor agreements (PLAs) on state funded projects. The bill, S.B. 1006, will […]
Editorial Praises Passage of Lancaster County Fairness in Contracting Legislation
An editorial in today’s Lancaster Intelligencer Journal supports Wednesday’s passage of legislation by Lancaster County Commissioners that will help taxpayers get the best possible construction product at the best possible price. The measure prohibits Lancaster County from mandating anti-competitive and costly government-mandated project labor agreement (PLA) schemes that have been harming Pennsylvania’s construction industry and Keystone taxpayers thanks to […]
Los Angeles Tangled Up in Project Labor Agreements in 2010
The web site for the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau describes Los Angeles as a “union-friendly city” and declares that “Meeting professionals who plan union meetings often end up in Los Angeles, a city built by union labor. L.A.’s world-class buildings – Walt Disney Concert Hall, STAPLES Center, L.A. LIVE and the Cathedral of […]
Lancaster County, PA Bans PLAs on Locally-Funded Projects
In a move designed to defend taxpayers against potential future wasteful and discriminatory Big Labor handouts, Lancaster County, PA commissioners approved a measure that will prohibit project labor agreements (PLAs) on locally-funded construction projects. Here is a quote that sums up the issue by the measure’s sponsor, Chairman Scott Martin, as reported by FOX43 WPMT: […]
United States Army Corps of Engineers Requests Information on Project Labor Agreements for New Mexico and South Carolina Construction Projects
The Ft.Worth District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has issued two surveys soliciting comments from the construction community addressing the potential use of government-mandated project labor agreements (PLAs) for large scale construction contracts exceeding $25 million in total cost. One survey is for the Brigade Combat Team Barracks at Fort Jackson, SC and the other survey […]
Minority Contractors Association in Portland, Oregon to Host PLA Forum
The National Association of Minority Contractors – Oregon is hosting a public forum on project labor agreements today (January 25, 2011) at the Kaiser Town Hall Bldg on N. Interstate (3704 N. Interstate) from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time. In a January 19 opinion piece in the Portland-based The Skanner newspaper entitled Can the Unions […]
Construction Union Membership Dips to All-Time Low
A new report released today (pdf) by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicates that from 2009 to 2010, union membership fell from 14.5 percent to 13.1 percent of the U.S. private construction workforce, with construction unions losing 157,000 members. In 2010, 801,000 workers in the private construction industry belonged to a union, the lowest recorded […]
Dissolve the State of Project Labor Agreements from Our Regulation Nation
On Jan. 18, President Obama issued an executive order, Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review, urging federal agencies to review and fix costly federal regulations that “stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive.” In an opinion editorial published in The Wall Street Journal (“Towards a 21st Century Regulatory,” 1/18/11), President Obama wrote: “Sometimes, those rules have gotten out […]
More Evidence Shows Project Labor Agreements Injure Competition
On Jan. 19, 2011, ABC’s weekly electronic publication, Newsline, conducted an electronic poll of Newsline subscribers about the impact of government-mandated project labor agreements (PLAs) on bidding for public construction projects. The poll remained open until Jan. 26, 2011 and readers were asked to respond to this question: ‘”Would you be more likely or less likely […]
Los Angeles is Laboring Under Greenmail
The January 17 Los Angeles Business Journal includes an opinion piece (Laboring Under ‘Greenmail’) by thetruthaboutPLAs.com blogger Kevin Dayton of Associated Builders and Contractors of California explaining that Los Angeles-based construction unions are exploiting the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and other environmental laws to hold up permits until the private developers of proposed projects […]