The Truth About Project Labor Agreements

On Monday, July 20, the Akron, OH School Board approved the use of wasteful and discriminatory union-only project labor agreements for three of the next five schools scheduled school construction projects.  The board decided to require PLAs despite an April budget report from the Ohio School Facilities Commission showing PLAs increased construction costs on Akron’s Leggett Elementary project by as much as 22 percent over comparable projects.  School board members sold the Leggett Elementary PLA to Akron residents as a test case, which it clearly failed. 

Nevertheless, board president James Hardy is quoted as saying, ”We want to see if the successes from Leggett can translate into other buildings.”  Hardy must define “success” as wasting taxpayer dollars on inflated construction costs and excluding the 70 percent of the Ohio private construction workforce that has chosen not to join a labor union from working on projects in their own community.