Union thugs in support of PLAs, at a public meeting in Orange County
The following arguments regarding project labor agreements, PLA’s, are found on PUBLICCEO.com. Thanks to James Spencer for providing this exchange. Their web site link is added below.
Presenting the opposition position is OC BOS member John M. W. Moorlach. Arguing on behalf of PLA’s is Bob Balgenorth, President of the State Building and Construction Trades Council.
Point-Counterpoint: The Argument Against Project Labor Agreements
Written by John M.W. Moorlach
It would be easy to make arguments for a competitive and level playing field when discussing PLAs.
For me the topic flows in a number of images.
The first is one of shock when the Board of Supervisors approved the requirement for PLAs on county related projects. Why would a board comprised of five Republicans vote to approve this?
Well, the answer is that only a three-member voting-block approved this counter-intuitive initiative. And they did it for a simple, but inexcusable, reason. At the time the PLA was approved, Orange County was in the middle of a major land battle over the issue of converting the closing El Toro Marine Base into an international airport.
The voters had seen two countywide ballot measures in support of the conversion. Soon the voters were going to weigh in on a third ballot measure. This time the anti-airport constituency was mobilized, funded and emotional. The three-member voting-block needed help.
The public unions traded putting their shoulders toward the effort for the PLA. For them it was a win-win. If they succeeded in defeating the anti-airport measure, they would have participated in building the new airport. If they lost, they still had the PLA in place. It was a clever way for the camel to get its nose under the tent in a politically conservative county.
The anti-airport movement prevailed. Their ballot measure passed. An airport at El Toro was lost, but the PLA was still in place.
I can still remember being in a room ten years ago with non-union shop representatives debating the feasibility of gathering signatures for an anti-PLA ballot measure to undo the embarrassing damage. They decided the cost was too high and the battle too formidable.
Some five years later, the county let the PLA requirement lapse and the new Board of Supervisors communicated that such a decision would not occur again under their watch.
End of discussion? No. Approving an ordinance that would prohibit the requirement for a PLA, unless mandated by state or Federal law, had to be done in order to make it difficult for future boards to make the “El Toro” faux pas.
This action incited the ire of the union community and their methods of persuasion were anachronistic. The “old-school” methods of protesting outside the Board’s office were utilized on two occasions. Both protests included two large inflatable rats. That was not very persuasive.
Testimony at our Board meetings included false claims and threats. “We tried to schedule meetings with each of the Supervisors.” I never received a call. “If you vote for this ordinance, we’ll go after you in your next election!” That’s persuasive.
The most interesting argument was “if you’re already opposed to doing a PLA, then why institutionalize it in an ordinance?” It made one wonder, if it really doesn’t change anything, then why are you here with inflatable rats, false claims and threats?
We’re talking about competitiveness, not coercion. Having a level playing field is the best approach for the taxpayers. If you need an edge to win, then you’re probably not running your business properly. And forcing your competitors to pay more or to claim that they are abusing their employees is not a logical argument when governments are retaining the lowest and most responsible bidders.
The images of the absurdity of mandating a PLA destroys the credibility of the good arguments that may be there to consider one. If your best argument is to force it on us, then you’ve failed in the debate before you’ve started.
John M.W. Moorlach, C.P.A.
Orange County Supervisor, Second District
Point-Counterpoint: The Case For Project Labor Agreements
Written by Bob Balgenorth
What makes a community? Families, friends, neighborhoods, good jobs with decent pay and benefits–all these things are essential to a strong, healthy, happy community.
These are also the goals and benefits of project labor agreements, which smart local leaders are able to customize to bring about precisely that result, a stronger and better community.
A project labor agreement is a pre-hire contract between labor and management that governs pay rates, benefits, work rules, and dispute resolution, and guarantees that workers will perform most efficiently during the project. PLAs are widely used in the public and private sectors for construction of everything from schools to courthouses to reservoirs to sports stadiums.
PLAs uplift communities and people, because they ensure that workers are highly skilled, have steady jobs, with family-supporting incomes, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing that families have good health care. Without those guarantees that PLAs bring, communities are left to bear the costs of caring for people without means, and everyone pays the price.
PLAs also bring the pride of high-quality workmanship to community projects, and prevent the shoddy workmanship that occurs when workers are inadequately trained, that inevitably leads to higher long-term maintenance and repair costs.
This is why communities greatly benefit from PLAs. They bring stability, reliability, quality, and long-term value, and can be customized to create a better social climate. In Los Angeles, for example, city officials tailored their redevelopment agency’s PLA to provide good construction career and apprenticeship opportunities to people in their most depressed areas, at once providing a better life and hope for a better future where these things were needed most.
Local government leaders who have used PLAs know about these benefits from firsthand experience. But recent academic studies have also reached the same conclusion: the benefits promised by PLAs are real, and the complaints used against them are unfounded and false.
A Cornell University study from 2009 found: “PLAs are a valuable construction management tool for project planning and labor cost reduction,” and further, “There is no evidence to support claims that project labor agreements either limit the pool of bidders or drive up actual construction costs.”
In fact, not only did non-union contractors bid on the Metropolitan Water District’s $2 billion eastside reservoir project, over 70 of them actually worked on that project.
Another 2009 study from Michigan State University, that researched PLA use dating back to the massive public works projects of the 1930s, found that the record clearly shows that PLAs “improve construction projects and provide benefits to owners, contractors, construction labor, communities, and the public.”
These studies prove that the repeated misrepresentations about PLAs—that they increase costs and exclude non-union bidders—simply hold no water, because the underlying assumption, that providing decent wages and conditions for workers necessarily increases the overall cost, is flatly false.
When the long-term increases in maintenance and repair costs resulting from poorer workmanship, and the costs of stoppages and delays of non-PLA projects are considered, PLAs look like a bargain. When the invigoration of the local economy, and local tax base, from decent wages and local hiring (a UCLA study shows PLAs result in 30% more local hiring) are factored in, it becomes a no-brainer. PLAs are a home run for local communities and their governments.
Further, PLAs in no way restrict bidding or opportunities for non-union contractors and workers. They simply hold union and non-union bidders alike to the same negotiated and agreed-upon wages, benefits, quality standards and local hiring provisions.
And they work. Local officials who’ve used them know PLAs work, and that their communities, businesses and workers are all better off because of them.
Bob Balgenorth
President of the State Building and Construction Trades Council
Debate link below:
http://publicceo.com/
Leave a Reply