As the catalyst for economic recovery and job creation in this country, these over regulation is something Gus and others like him could do without.

Specifically, Mr. Perea addresses regulations to implement President Obama’s Executive Order 13502 (at 3:08 in the video), encouraging wasteful and discriminatory project labor agreements on federal construction projects costing more than $25 million.

It’s a little misleading to say the entire construction industry opposes the order. Certainly union contractors and 14.5 percent of the U.S. private construction workforce that belong to a union and stand to benefit from discriminatory and costly PLAs support this order. But astute taxpayers and the remaining 85 percent of the construction workforce that does not belong to a union are right to challenge this special interest policy, as PLAs needlessly increase costs and essentially prohibit quality nonunion contractors and their skilled employees from badly needed jobs (there is 24.7 percent unemployment in the construction industry as of Jan. 2010) and hinder them from delivering the best possible product at the best possible price to the public.   

What’s notable about this article – besides the fact that it provides an accurate update on Executive Order 13502 - is that McMahon highlights the problems with false premises that are the foundation of Executive Order 13502.

McMahon said the premise of the executive order is false.

“They say contractors don’t have their own workforces and just hire by the job,” McMahon said. “That’s not true. Most contractors, particularly those working on projects that are $25 million, overwhelmingly currently employ their own workers.”

A PLA might put a construction firm in the position of having workers that are not part of its own workforce on a job to be eligible for a federal contract. With half of the cost of a project coming from labor, it is best for a firm to be familiar with its workers, McMahon said.

“As a businessman, it’s one thing to have the numbers on the page,” he said. “What you really need to know is how productive everybody is. You can’t get a brand new team and expect to win the playoff game.”

Even if the contractor brings some of his own people onto a job, they would still be part of the required collective bargaining agreement.

TheTruthAboutPLAs.com agrees and it is clear that the architects of the executive order have limited understanding of the inner workings of  the construction industry.  If they did, they wouldn’t have built this order on a foundation of false premises.

And these false premises are going to end up costing taxpayers additional money with no added return in project quality. Gus Perea, president of ABC member Adams-Bickel Construction in Collegeville, Pa. says PLAs will drive up the cost of construction projects and make projects less efficient.  Perea discusses how PLAs and Executive Order 13502 are simply payback to Big Labor.

“We’ve been seeing the paying back of a long standing debt from Congress and now the executive branch,” Perea told CNSNews.com. “It’s got to be payback. What else can it be? The government should encourage competitive bidding and pricing.”

…When Obama signed the order last year, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa praised the step, saying, “This is yet another reason for working families to be grateful that we have a champion in the White House.”

M. Kirk Pickerel, president and CEO of the Associated Builders and Contractors, criticized the order last year, saying, “Union-only PLAs drive up costs for American taxpayers while unfairly discriminating against 84 percent of U.S. construction workers who choose not to join a labor union. All taxpayers should have the opportunity to compete fairly on any project funded by the federal government.”

Further, “construction contracts subject to union-only PLAs are designed to be awarded exclusively to unionized contractors and their all-union workforces,” said Pickerel. “Absent the economic benefits of competitive bidding, union-only PLAs are known to increase construction costs between 10 percent and 20 percent and discriminate against minorities, women and qualified construction workers who have traditionally been excluded from union membership.”

The media is starting to catch on that Executive Order 13502 benefits nobody but Big Labor. Will the mounting public pressure force the White House to re-examine this bad public policy?

Here is an excerpt from his website (www.glenmeakem.com):

Obama’s Executive Order 13502
Gus Perea, President and CEO of Adams-Bickel Associates (an award winning non-union contractor) and a Representative of Associated Builders & Contractors, was a guest on my program this weekend and discussed President Obama’s Executive Order 13502.  Few people have even heard of this Executive Order, but it is in the process of being enacted.  It encourages federal agencies to require Project Labor Agreements (PLA’s) on federally funded construction projects worth over $25 million.  PLA’s are bad for the economy and for small businesses because they require that non union contractors abide by inefficient union work rules and contribute to union pension plans-which amounts to at least an 18% cost premium.  In addition to driving up the cost of taxpayer funded projects, PLA’s are morally offensive because they give a small minority of the workforce special privileges (only 16% of construction workers are unionized in the U.S.) and cost everyone else jobs.  In short, PLA’s take away freedom from non union contractors.  But as I said above, the political left does not care about freedom.  They just care about power.

You can listen to the entire interview here.

The American people are starting to understand that PLAs are a bad deal.  They are a handout to one special interest group at the expense of hardworking taxpayers all over the country.  If the federal government begins utilizing PLAs, it will be on the backs of ALL taxpayers, regardless of where they live. 

Thank you for spreading the word, Mr. Meakem.

On the rare occasion that a nonunion contractor wins a PLA contract, the order would bully its employees into joining a union or paying union dues on projects their taxes already fund. Those provisions typically discourage nonunion contractors from competing.

The lack of competition from the nonunion sector and inefficient work rules that PLAs require can boost construction costs by up to 18 percent — a cost the taxpayer eats.

So let’s review: PLAs rob job-seeking locals and the majority of the construction work force of the chance to work on federal projects, and deny taxpayers the accountability they deserve from the government.

It’s natural to wonder how the Obama administration justifies such bad policy. The answer is, by emphasizing the possibility of labor disputes that might delay projects and increase costs.

Some studies have completely invalidated those claims, the latest of which comes from the Beacon Hill Institute. Beacon Hill combed the years under the PLA-prohibiting Bush administration for any instance of a labor dispute derailing a federal construction project and found, interestingly, not a single documented instance of a dispute a PLA could have prevented.

So, why is the president inventing problems that don’t exist? A look at his campaign game tape might give us a clue. Among Obama’s biggest supporters is Big Labor, which has, coincidentally, been one of his most frequent visitors to the White House.

But even forgetting that paybacks are the purest form of political corruption, handing such a disproportionate amount of power to such a small subset of the work force will bring side effects bound to harm the Pennsylvania economy.

Click here to learn more about the Beacon Hill Institute’s September 2009 study, Project Labor Agreements on Federal Construction Projects: A Costly Solution in Search of a Problem.