Frederick Mason III, ABC

Hundreds of ABC volunteers and staff will descend on Washington D.C. June 20-24 for 2016 Legislative Week, ABC’s annual government affairs conference combined with congressional office visits.  With an agenda chock full of legislative updates, educational seminars on a variety of topics including diversity and inclusion, the upcoming Presidential election and ABC’s popular Legal Conference, the week is sure to energize the merit shop contractor community of the United States.

The highlight of the week features ABC member visits to their respective Congressional offices, where members will engage their reps and senators on topics important to ABC, including restrictive regulations and legislative issues affecting the construction industry. Needless to say, the merit shop message will be loud and clear as ABC members abide by its political motto, “Get into politics or get out of business!”

Members interested in attending Legislative Week can find more details at www.abc.org.

Project Labor Agreements Continue to Dominate Public Projects

It’s happened again. Another public project, another project labor agreement (PLA). This time it’s the new $125 million, 195,000 s/f College of Engineering Building planned for the University of Rhode Island. It will be one of the largest single building projects ever undertaken by Rhode Island state government.

After a brief public hearing to review the need for a PLA on this project, with several ABC members testifying in opposition to the PLA, the review committee, predictably, assigned a PLA to the project.  We are still waiting to see the language in this PLA, but are certain that project deadlines and budget overruns will mar this critical public construction project, as has been the case on most if not all other public projects saddled with a PLA in Rhode Island.

ABC has consistently opposed PLAs, which are privately negotiated deals between union representatives and public officials that require projects be awarded only to contractors and subcontractors who agree to:  (1) recognize unions as the representatives of their employees on the job; (2) use the union hiring hall to obtain workers; and (3) obey the unions’ restrictive work rules, job classifications and arbitration procedures.  Consequently, a PLA guarantees that the public will pay more for the project as the unions are able to immediately eliminate a majority of the competition. Recognizing this, 22 states have outlawed PLAs and more are considering doing so.

By mandating the workforce composition on public construction projects, the Rhode Island workplace and the taxpayers are negatively impacted.  When government officials agree to union mandates that effectively compromise the open bidding process, they fail to protect the taxpayers, as well as more than 80% of the construction workforce that has chosen not to be union.  ABC will not stop fighting PLAs. Stay tuned.

To learn more about the harm PLAs cause taxpayers, visit www.thetruthaboutplas.com.

Frederick Mason III is the president of ABC Rhode Island.