This event is part of their Save the Endangered Species campaign to educate the public on the true impact of PLAs.

TheTruthAboutPLAs.com’s Ben Brubeck is on the scene to tell the truth about PLAs and I am here to liveblog the event.

Read the minute by minute after the jump:

10:05am: Churchill Strategies’ Jeff Coleman introduces the ABC Keystone chapter as the sponsor of the event and complements them for their commitment to putting Pennsylvanians back to work.

10:06 Coleman reminds attendants about the Endangered Species campaign to protect Pennsylvania’s construction workforce.  Remember the great video?

10:10 Coleman introduces David Tuerck from the Beacon Hill Institute.  His research repeatedly found that PLAs increase bid prices and final costs throughout the northeast.

10:13 Tuerck makes a great point.  The highest profile project to be built in America with a PLA may be the Big Dig in Boston.  This is not exactly the model for successful and cost efficient construction.

10:15 Another great point.  Tuerck points out that there were zero cost overruns or construction delays during the previous administration to justify the Obama executive order encouraging PLAs.  This strikes at the heart of President Obama’s argument for the order and shows that PLAs are unnecessary on large-scale construction work.

10:18 Coleman introduced Ben Brubeck from ABC National and TheTruthAboutPLAs.com to lay out the political history of presidential executive orders encouraging and prohibiting PLAs.  Brubeck points out that the PLA E.O. was one of the first actions taken by President Obama.  Two wars and an economic crisis, but he found time to do that?

10:20 Brubeck explains that Democrat leaders support anti-taxpayer PLAs because “they know what side their bread is buttered on.”

10:23 Brubeck: “It’s true that nonunion contractors can bid on PLA jobs, but they are put at such a disadvantage…it just doesn’t make sense to bid.   Sure, everyone can apply to Harvard, but that doesn’t mean they can get it.”

10:24 Brubeck tells crowd that some communities – especially in southern California – are standing up and rallying together against special interests.

10:25 Coleman shows Big Labor’s ad in Chula Vista. Very misleading.  Presents their argument in 30 seconds.  This ad will be available as part of the video of the PLA forum.

10:27 Brubeck: “There are nonunion employees that rely on a fair shot at building public projects, same as the union workers.  Nonunion workers just don’t want to be shut out.”

10:28 Coleman Skypes-in Sam Foley from the National Association of Minority Contractors in Philadelphia.

10:29: Foley: “This issue is front and center as a civil rights issue.”

10:30 Foley states that there are two different types of unions.  One has supported upward mobility for minorities.  That is not the building and construction trade unions.  The Building Trades have systematically discriminated against women and minorities in the construction industry.

10:32 Foley: “The trade union movement discriminates against women and people of color.”

10:33 Foley to Lt. Gov candidates: “Put the interests of the majority above the interests of the few.”

10:34: Foley essentially tells the audience to get into politics or get out of business.

10:36: Coleman introduced Jeff Lawrence of Forefront Construction, the face of the Save the Endangered Species billboards.  Awesome story.  Started his business so he could make his own decisions, spend time with his son and help the industry through being a true minority contractor.

10: 40: Lawrence “I don’t need a ‘Jeff’ labor agreement’”.  He goes onto say that he is fine with contractor prequalification, but is not sure where the other side gets the idea that nonunion firms cannot do the job.  “I am safe and get the job done.  It’s ludicrous to say you need a PLA to get safe, on time, on budget projects.”

10:42 Lawrence: “Exclusion for any reason is discrimination.  How do I look at my employees and say that I’ve got a great job, but you can’t work because the PLA says I need to hire from the unions.  We’re fortunate to get opportunities from people that believe in free enterprise.  We’re very happy about that.”  Really great points.

10:44 Coleman introduces strong supporters of Pennsylvania taxpayers against Big Labor and their demands for government-mandated PLAs.  State Rep. John Bear points out that they’re still in the educational phase.  “To a person, when people learn about PLAs, they ask what the heck is going on.  It is Big Labor’s dirty little secret.”

10:46 Coleman introduces State Sen. and former contractor Lloyd Smucker.  Sen. Smucker points out that they’re talking about equal opportunity.  He also mentions that “if competition goes down, then price goes up.”  It’s econ 101.

10:48 Coleman introduces local contractor John Kinsley.  His company was started by his father in the early 60s and has expanded to general construction.  Kinsley tells the crowd that PLAs hurt nonunion employees, many of whom are loyal, no matter the size of your company.

10:50 Kinsley: “PLAs force you to lay workers off to hire union workers.  It’s terrible to employees that may have been loyal for years.  And to say that nonunion workers are less qualified to do the work is ridiculous.”

10:51 Kinsley: “We’ve got 50 years of history completing jobs on time, on budget with a good safety record.  We wouldn’t be in business if we didn’t.  Penn DOT prequalifies contractors already, even without PLAs, then why do we need them?”

10:54 Kinsley: “How unions do things is outdated.  It is not the same modern benefits that nonunion workers get through their employers.”

10:58 Coleman closes the forum.

The PLA forum is over.  We’re about to move onto the Lt. Governor debate.

We will post video of this event as soon as it is available.

Leave your thoughts in the comments.

As regular readers of TheTruthAboutPLAs.com remember, Gov. Ed Rendell (D) promised the Pennsylvania construction unions in 2008 that the Department of General Services (DGS) would require contractors to sign wasteful and discriminatory project labor agreements (PLAs) in order to work on over $800 million in upcoming state correctional institution construction.

This promise was a condition of a sweetheart deal between Rendell and the powerful Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trade Council, in which the council promised to support the prison construction appropriation through the state legislature in exchange for government-mandated PLAs on the prison work.

Fast forward to March 2010, despite a significant public relations campaign, a serious legislative inquiry and ridiculously inflated initial bids, the Rendell administration is still fighting to keep their handout to Big Labor attached to the projects.

Here’s an excerpt from a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article (“Dispute Between Three Builders Delays Prisons,” 3/14) describing the situation:

State officials wanted to start work months ago on the first of three new prisons to ease crowding in the corrections system, a problem that has forced 2,000 inmates to be shipped out of state.

But a groundbreaking date for the first new State Correctional Institution, to be built in Centre County, is still not known, and a major reason can be summed up in three words — Project Labor Agreement.

Rendell administration officials and labor unions favor PLAs, but nonunion builders don’t, and the competition between union and nonunion builders for the lucrative prison construction work has been fierce.

In 2008, Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell’s administration signed a deal with union contractors to use PLAs to build the new prisons. The first prison — SCI Benner, to be located in Benner Township near the existing SCI Rockview — will cost about $200 million and hold 2,000 inmates.

A second new prison will be twice that size — holding 4,000 inmates and costing about $400 million. It will be built near the aging SCI Graterford in suburban Philadelphia and will be the new home for its 3,700 inmates. The current prison is to be emptied and mothballed.

Though the Benner and Graterford projects are months late in getting under way, the state now hopes to award contracts for them this spring and break ground this summer.

A third new prison, holding 2,000 prisoners and also costing about $200 million, is to go in Fayette County, at a site still to be announced. The goal is to have that project under way late this year, with all three prisons to be completed in about three years.

Although the Corrections Department operates the state’s system of 27 prisons, the three construction projects are being handled by the Department of General Services, which has been tangling with a group of nonunion contractors over the labor agreements since last summer.

General Services agreed two years ago with a group of politically powerful labor unions — the Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council — to use the agreements for the prisons.

Construction “will require that labor organizations affiliated with the Building Trades will be the exclusive bargaining agents for all construction labor trades and crafts workers on each such project,” states a letter signed in April 2008 by James Creedon, secretary of the Department of General Services and a Rendell appointee, and Frank Sirianni, president of the state Building and Construction Trades Council.

Despite the obvious need to get this construction underway, both due to prison overcrowding and to help with the staggering unemployment in the construction industry, the Rendell administration continues to insist that PLAs need to be utilized on these projects.

Here is a second excerpt from the Post-Gazette article:

The request for an injunction to stop the Benner project ended in August when the state rejected all six proposals it had received because all of them were too high — meaning they exceeded the $200 million budgeted for the work.

But legal wrangling resumed in September when General Services sought bids for the new Graterford prison. Nonunion firms again sued over the PLA requirement but this time, Judge Pellegrini ruled in the state’s favor, denying the plaintiffs’ request for an injunction to stop the project.

In his ruling, he said, “The public would be harmed” if he granted the injunction because it would delay efforts to ease overcrowded and possibly dangerous conditions in state prisons. The decision is being appealed to the state Supreme Court.

The Benner project now has been delayed for nine months. Mr. Creedon said it’s ironic that with hundreds of construction workers out of work, the opponents of the labor agreements have prevented the prison projects from getting started and putting people to work.

New Benner construction proposals were sought last week and a contract could be awarded by early May.

“We can’t wait around any longer,” Mr. Creedon said, adding that he hoped the Benner prison work would begin by early summer.

PLAs won’t be mandated this time for the Benner prison, a decision that Diane Tokarsky, a lawyer for nonunion builders, called “encouraging.”

However, a PLA will be required when the new bids are sought for the Graterford prison project this spring, said General Services spokesman Ed Myslewicz. The department will do so because it has a court decision affirming the use of the agreement for that project, he said.

This is just another example of PLAs as political payback to Big Labor at the expense of the taxpayers.

The Engineering News-Record (ENR) also covered this story through a reprint of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article available here.

As regular readers recall, DGS lead on effort on behalf of the Rendell Administration to require PLAs on over $800 million of prison state construction.

Click here for more information on this issue and other PLA developments in Pennsylvania.

Senator Smucker’s statement on PLAs for the Rockview prison project in Centre County is available here.

As usual, the Commonwealth Foundation knocks it out of the park.  Here’s an excerpt:

The pandering to Big Labor cannot go unchecked in Pennsylvania, especially with everyone feeling the pain from this economic downturn. Pennsylvania spends billions of dollars on construction projects; it is imperative for lawmakers to act now and bar PLAs from any more construction projects. Unions, of course, can continue to compete alongside open-shops; they just shouldn’t get government preference. And most importantly, taxpayers should be taken off the hook for PLA kickbacks to Big Labor.

This hearing gave lawmakers, nonunion contractors, employees and other business groups and construction associations the opportunity to testify publicly about the problems associated with government-mandated PLAs. Big Labor also had their chance to argue in support of PLAs.

Here is a great video of Representative Bear’s thoughts after the hearing:

Check out our earlier posts for more information on the hearing, including video of other lawmakers weighing in on PLAs.  A video of the full hearing is available here

Pennsylvania lawmakers, nonunion contractors, employees and other business groups and construction associations testified about the problems associated with government-mandated PLAs.  Big Labor had their chance to argue in support of PLAs too.

Please check out our earlier post for more information about the hearing.

Video of the hearing is available here.

PA lawmakers, nonunion contractors, employees and other business groups and construction associations testified about the problems associated with government-mandated PLAs.  Big Labor had their chance to argue in support of PLAs too.

Perhaps the most interesting testimony of the day was submitted by Terrence M. McDonough of the General Contractors Association of Pennsylvania (GCAP).  GCAP is the association representing union contractors in PA. That’s right, UNION contractors. Learn why GCAP is opposed to government-mandated PLAs from their submitted testimony:

GCAP represents the member interests of the Master Builders Association of Western PA (MBA), the Keystone Contractors Association (KCA) and the General Building Contractors Association (GBCA). As such, we are the statewide voice for more than 500 union-affiliated general and specialty contractors and their affiliates throughout the Commonwealth.

While GCAP members regularly employ a union workforce, our general contractors have no seat at the table when a PLA is negotiated between a public owner and a union. In the current process, the provisions agreed to by the union are for their benefit and their benefit alone.

GCAP opposes government-mandated PLAs on any publicly funded construction projectbecause we believe that publicly financed contracts should be awarded without regard to the lawful labor relations policies and practices of the government contractor. GCAP believes that neither a public owner nor its representative should mandate the use of a PLA that would compel any firm, union or nonunion, to change its labor policy or practice in order to compete for or to perform work on a publicly financed project. GCAP further believes that government-mandated PLAs restrain competition, drive up costs and disrupt local collective bargaining.

TheTruthAboutPLAs.com encourages readers to review all of the GCAP testimony because it presents some additional reasons why PLAs are bad public policy and only benefit special interests. Here is a press release from GCAP on the testimony.

Big Labor is quick to paint the debate about PLAs as a union vs. ABC issue, but it really isn’t. Associated General Contractors (AGC), Independent Electrical Contractors (IEC), U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the National Black Chamber of Commerce and many other associations, employers and employees are opposed to discriminatory and costly government-mandated PLAs.

The live video of the hearing has not been archived and made available to the public yet, but we promise to link to it ASAP.

After the hearing, PA lawmakers were quick to explain how PLAs are unfair, discriminatory, costly and bad public policy.

Here is Rep. John Bear on PLAs:

Rep. Matt Gabler says that instituting fair labor practices should be a priority and it is time to allow for competitive bidding and fair practices on PA funded construction projects. Click here for a video of his comments.

Click here for the video of Rep. Stan Saylor discussing his support of efforts to eliminate unjust labor practices.

Click here to watch Rep. Jerry Stern explain why PLAs are bad for Pennsylvania workers.

Rep. Dick Stevenson says this debate over PLAs is about fairness.

TheTruthAboutPLAs is pleased that PA lawmakers, union contracting associations and other groups that testified yesterday were not afraid to take a public stand in support of fairness, open competition and job opportunities for all PA employers, employees and their families.

Update: Here is some related media coverage.

While we do not have anything against unions, we think it is unfair to eliminate the vast majority of Pennsylvania construction companies from bidding on state funded projects because they are not unionized… and we think it unfair to Pennsylvania tax payers for the state to have to pay union scale if the work can be done less expensively without compromising quality.

In related news, on 10/27 WITF Smart Talk Radio held a lengthy and heated “debate” on PLAs between guests Frank Sirianni, President, Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council and Jack Zimmer, President and CEO, Associated Builders and Construction, Keystone Chapter.  If you want to learn more about the arguments for and against discriminatory and costly PLAs (and listen to an excellent interview with Rep. Bear) be sure to listen here.

To learn how to support H.B. 2010 and the best interests of PA taxpayers, Take Action at http://theendangeredspecies.org.

With a little less than 13 months to go before we elect a new governor, the Rendell administration is working vigorously to find ways to reward one of its largest political contributors — organized labor/unions.

The problem is that it is being done at the taxpayers’ expense, and to the detriment of the majority of state construction workers, including many right here in Central Pennsylvania.

The authors have sponsored legislation that would prohibit these special interest handouts to Big Labor. The Open Contracting Act (H.B. 2010) is especially important because it would prohibit discriminatory and costly PLAs that were attached by the Rendell Administration’s Pennsylvania Department of General Services to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of state-funded prison projects.

Rep. Saylor and Rep. Bear’s persuasive case against government-mandated PLAs in Pennsylvania is best summed up in this Op-Ed passage.

State and local governments should not be in the business of promulgating contracts that: a) discriminate against 80 percent of Pennsylvania’s state construction workers who choose not to be part of organized labor; b) add additional costs to public construction projects; c) are not necessary to protect workers’ wages; and d) create an uneven playing field. That is exactly what PLAs do.

The Op-Ed also crushes weak arguments offered by PLA proponents.

Advocates argue that without PLAs, public construction projects would be under-bid and badly executed, using an unskilled workforce and possibly illegal aliens from out-of-town who are poorly paid and do not receive any benefits. In fact, the opposite is true.

By using PLAs, government-funded construction projects are frequently awarded to out-of-town companies and workers at a much higher cost to taxpayers. For proof, look no further than the state’s Centre County prison project bid and Pottsville’s new transportation hub.

In Pottsville, the contractor who was awarded the project was from New York. In the case of the Centre County prison project, the PLA designation was pulled after the bids came back considerably higher than the estimated $200 million, not to mention that multiple lawsuits were filed and less than 1 percent of the workforce is unionized in this part of Pennsylvania.

It is important to note that all of these projects are subject to Pennsylvania’s prevailing wage laws and require verification of citizenship, with or without a PLA.

If we truly want to be accountable to our taxpayers and not discriminate, Pennsylvania needs to pass House Bill 2010 to allow open contracting that guarantees taxpayers get the best work at the best price, and ensures that no project bidder, large or small, is excluded from bidding on a government-funded construction project because of an affiliation or a lack of affiliation with a union.

To learn how to support H.B. 2010 and the best interests of PA taxpayers, Take Action at http://theendangeredspecies.org.

7:10am on York’s Morning News with Gary Sutton (Streaming Audio; WSBA 910 AM Harrisburg, PA)

9-10am on air debate with Frank Sirianni, president of the Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council, on WITF’s Smart Talk program (Streaming Audio; 93.3 FM Harrisburg, PA)

4pm on Bob Durgin’s show (Streaming Audio; WHP 580 AM Harrisburg, PA)