Key Points - PLA

What is a PLA?

A Project Labor Agreement (PLA) is a mandated pre-bid specification negotiated between a project owner and construction trade unions. PLAs can be as long as 60 pages. When a PLA is imposed on a project, all contractors and subcontractors working on the project must sign the PLA and abide by its requirements, even though these contractors did not participate in the negotiations.

Government agencies require a PLA when unions successfully pressure elected officials to vote for one.  On private projects, unions typically abuse the government permitting process to delay projects until the owner agrees to use a PLA.

PLAs discourage many capable and responsible companies from bidding on construction projects. Over 80% of the nation's construction workforce choosing not to belong to a union (2005 Bureau of Labor Statistics), keeping the merit shop portion of the industry from bidding on work results in reduce competition and increased costs. PLAs commonly contain the following discriminatory provisions:

Employee Requirements:

• Pay union dues, even if the employee comes from a non-union firm.
• All workers must come from a union hiring hall. This exclusive form of hire prefers to dispatch workers based on the degree of union membership and seniority. Companies would be forced to lay off a proven, productive workforce to hire strangers from the union hiring hall.
• All employees must contribute to union health, welfare, and pension plans, regardless of whether or not the workers already have their own plans. Union plans also require long vesting periods thereby making it highly unlikely that the non-union worker would ever see the monies they contributed.
• All apprentices must come from state approved union programs, regardless of the fact that there are thousands of apprentices in state approved merit shop programs.

Contractor Requirements:

• PLAs subvert existing collective bargaining agreements for unionized companies.
• Contractors are not allowed to negotiate the PLA. Only union representatives are allowed at the table with the owner.
• Adoption of restrictive work rules that clash with both existing union and merit shop rules. Contractors' existing work rules are innovative, flexible, and negotiated to allow for maximum efficiency on the job. Under a PLA all new rules are set.
• PLAs use only union job classifications.
• PLAs force union arbitration and grievance procedures on all contractors.

Few merit shop contractors would alter their operations or impose union requirements on their employees in order to be awarded a bid. Many union contractors will not expose their employees to work rules and new jurisdictions that they had no hand negotiating. Because of these provisions PLAs reduce competition and drive up costs for owners.

PLA Proponents' Real Motivations:

"These power plants were built with a hundred-percent union labor using project labor agreements."
- California Building and Construction Trades Council President, Robert Balgenorth in speech before National IBEW.

"...but it (PLA) does make us the exclusive source of manpower for the companies that successfully bid the work."
- Lou Franchimon in recent IBEW newsletter.

PLAs are blatant tools of discrimination masquerading as mechanisms of smart construction management. Forcing someone to associate with a private organization (union) as a condition of employment is synonymous with forcing someone to join a particular church as a job requirement. PLAs are most insidious when they impact public works projects for which the same merit shop employees now excluded from the work are still paying out of their own tax dollars!  CFEC exists to fight for the rights of all workers in the construction industry and will do so until PLAs and other discriminatory practices cease to be a threat.