Santa Fe City Council Delays Implementation of Discriminatory CWA/PLA Mandate
Last week, the Santa Fe City Council delayed the implementation of a wasteful and discriminatory community workforce agreement (CWA) mandate for all city projects costing more than $500,000 after city officials struggled to implement the requirement on a small firehouse renovation and expansion. They did not have any bidders willing to work under a PLA. [...]
Big Labor Claims Prove Unfounded
In the wake of the overwhelming voter support for Proposition A, which bans government-mandated project labor agreements (PLAs) on city projects in San Diego, union boss Lorena Gonzalez has said repeatedly that Big Labor was outspent 7-1 by corporate interests supporting Proposition A. Here is a video of Gonzalez making the claim on a local [...]
Project Labor Agreements: Not What We Need, Not What We Deserve
Today, Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) released a new video explaining the negative impact of union-favoring government-mandated project labor agreements (PLAs) on taxpayers and the vast majority of the construction workforce that chooses not to join a labor organization. This video is just one more resource in the fight against wasteful government-mandated PLAs. Supporting facts [...]
San Diego Area Voters Again Say No to PLA Mandates
San Diego area voters again said no to wasteful and discriminatory project labor agreement (PLA) mandates on Tuesday. Proposition A, the City of San Diego ballot initiative that will ban government-mandated PLAs on city funded construction projects, was approved with 58 percent of the vote. The City of San Diego is the eighth most populous city in the U.S. [...]
House Defends Principles of Fair and Open Competition with Passage of Amendment Restricting Government-Mandated PLAs on NDAA Authorized Projects
It was a historic week for the merit shop contracting community in the U.S. House of Representatives. Thursday, by a bipartisan vote of 211 to 209, the House passed an amendment offered by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and cosponsored by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2013 [...]
California Lawmakers Pay Back Their Big Labor Allies, Take Steps to Deprive Charter Cities of Local Control
Elected officials in California have again taken their focus away from solving the troubled state’s problems to give a handout to their Big Labor enablers. From 2000 to 2011, the merit shop construction community helped local leaders and voters across the state understand that government-mandated project labor agreements (PLAs) deprive taxpayers of the opportunity to [...]
Virginia Passes Law Curtailing Government-Mandated Project Labor Agreement Schemes
In a win for taxpayers and Virginia’s merit shop construction industry, on April 9, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) signed the Fair and Open Competition in Government Contracting Act (HB 33) into law. H.B. 33 prohibits the Commonwealth of Virginia and recipients of state assistance from mandating project labor agreements (PLAs) and enacting PLA preferences discriminating [...]
The Dismal Future of Construction Industry Multiemployer Pension Plans
A new report shining light on the dreadful health of multi-employer pension plans (MEPPs) for U.S. union workers and retirees estimates such plans are only 52 percent funded, with a $369 billion shortfall. MEPPs in the construction industry are responsible for a significant amount of pension shortfalls.
Construction MEPPs are responsible for about $167 billion (or 47 percent) worth of PBGC-insured MEPP underfunding. Abd it could get worse. Fifty-five percent of the 1,488 MEPPs insured by the PBGC are in the construction industry. The largest number of employees from any industry, about 3.885 million or 37.4 percent of all PBGC-insured MEPP participants (workers and retirees), are from the construction industry.
County Hospitals Are Prime Targets for Project Labor Agreements: Ventura County is the Latest in California
The first government-mandated project labor agreement (PLA) in California (following the Boston Harbor decision at the U.S. Supreme Court) was imposed in the spring of 1994 by the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors for a county hospital construction project. Last year, unions managed to squeak out (on a 3-2 vote) their first PLA for [...]
California Union Boss/Community College District Trustee Not Big on Disclosure
It isn’t hard to see that Big Labor is engaged in an organized effort to get union bosses elected and appointed to local governing entities, i.e. school boards, community college commissions, county councils, etc. This strategy has paid dividends in a number of communities, where labor leaders have pushed these governing bodies into requiring wasteful [...]