The Truth About Project Labor Agreements

Associated Builders and Contractors’ (ABC) member Stephen Worth, president and CEO of Worth and Company, Inc., Pipersville, Pa., yesterday testified at a forum in the U.S. House of Representatives that was examining the preferential treatment Big Labor is receiving by the Obama administration and its allies on Capitol Hill.

Worth’s testimony focused on Executive Order 13502 and federal and state government-mandated union-only project labor agreements (PLAs). Worth described how his 400 employees are excluded from PLA construction projects, even though they are qualified and their own tax dollars are being used to fund the projects.

PLAs drive up the cost of construction by reducing competition and effectively excluding merit shop contractors from working on state and federal projects paid for by their own tax dollars.

Construction projects subject to PLAs stifle competition and take away opportunity from nonunion employees unless they agree to the PLA. While nonunion contractors are permitted to bid on PLA projects, the reality is the contracts subject to PLAs end up being awarded almost exclusively to unionized contractors.

Currently, only 15.6 percent of America’s private construction workforce belongs to a union. This means PLAs discriminate against more than 8 out of 10 construction workers, including all of my employees.

In an industry facing an unemployment rate of more than 20 percent, we cannot afford to give some workers jobs simply because they carry a union card while forcing merit shop employees to be without work.

TheTruthAboutPLAs.com covered the forum, entitled “A Culture of Favoritism: The Obama Administration’s Labor Agenda” with a post yesterday.

Here is ABC’s press release on the event.

If you are curious about other types of gifts Big Labor has received from the Obama Administration, a post by Rick Manning on BigGovernment.com documents some key special interest handouts in the Obama agenda(“Transforming the U.S. Department of Labor to the Department of Organized Labor,” 1/20).