Dear neighbors:

The following article by Mr. Vance Ayres of the Washington DC Building Trades Council makes the case for why Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) make good sense in creating a highly-skilled, benefitted, fairly-paid workforce in Maryland.  While Mr. Ayres focuses on Charles County in his article (the article rebuts a converse article that favored non-union contacting in that county), the overall case for PLAs is universally applicable to all counties, and to the State of Maryland -- and I could not agree more.

Project Labor Agreements and setting the record straight on multiple issues

 There are some county officials that are finally willing to stand up to the special interests of the Associated Builders & Contractors (ABC). They are a group of contractors whose main concern is how much profit they can make on every project they work on at the expense of everyone else involved. This includes Charles County and its constituents. Whenever there is taxpayer money involved there should be some guarantee that there will be benefits back to the taxpayers like the hiring of local residents. This can be accomplished by elected officials requiring a PLA (which is sometimes referred to as a Community Benefit Agreement) that contain provisions that require all contractors on the project to hire local residents and good law abiding contractors.

The first myth that the ABC portrays is that PLA’s drive up the costs of construction projects. The truth is there have been numerous studies on this by UCLA, Cornell and other leading academics that have concluded that there is simply no evidence to back up this conclusion. The studies upon which the critics of PLA’s routinely rely fail to take into account other factors that influence a project’s cost. One of the practices of the non- union contractors is to give an extremely low bid to win it knowing they are going to have change orders that cause the original bid to dramatically increase after they have won the contract and are already vested and working, that will in turn cause it to run over budget. These same non-union contractors bid these jobs knowing that they put in a bid that undermanned the project that will cause delay and come in over the projected finish date, which will also drives up costs. Another reason for budget and time over runs is misclassification of workers. This basically means some of the workers are being classified as journeypersons when they haven’t been through the proper apprenticeship programs. These programs teach them to be as safe and as efficient as they should be to complete the job assigned in the best possible way. The process of all workers going through a union construction trade hall to be hired guarantees that the worker is qualified to do the work they are being hired for and are informed of the benefits they are entitled to while working on the PLA project. The second form of misclassification is contractors subcontracting out their work to some individual workers and classifying them as contractors to act as a pass through to avoid having to meet the requirements of employing people for example paying workman’s compensation, taxes, etc. Under a PLA all these issues are avoided as a project being executed under a PLA is constantly under a microscope by all participants.

Another myth about PLA’s is that they discriminate against anyone or any contractor. A PLA does NOT discriminate; it sets a standard for all union and non-union contractors to meet. Contractors do not have to become union contractors nor do the workers have to join a union to work on the PLA project. All contractors while working on a PLA project will have to compensate the actual apprentices and journeypersons at a certain wage with health and pension benefits. Also, PLA’s have proved over and over to the contributing of hiring women and minorities in the construction industry.

Due to the fact that labor and material costs are the same on the project to all contractors, the bids should be a highly competitive. The bottom line is the highly competitive bid process should benefit everyone from the project owner to the contractors and especially the construction and the community of Charles County.

The Project Labor Agreement guarantees the most highly skilled and safest building trades’ people in the world while offering true career opportunities to local residents. The good wages and benefits allow them to provide for their families and contribute economic vitality for their community.    

Vance Ayres

Executive Secretary-Treasurer

Washington DC Building Trades Council

(Representing over 25,000 building trades members and their families)