The blunt instrument used to give unions a leg up is the “project labor agreement (PLA),” which in theory sets reasonable pre-work terms and conditions — but in practice, requires contractors to hand over exclusive bargaining control; to pay inflated, above-market wages and benefits; and to fork over dues money and pension funding to corrupt, cash-starved labor organizations.
These anti-competitive agreements undermine a fair bidding process on projects that locked-out, nonunion laborers are funding with their own tax dollars. And these PLAs benefit the privileged few at the expense of the vast majority: In the construction industry, 85 percent of the workforce is nonunion by choice.
We don’t need to theorize about how this shakedown works in the real world. Boston’s notorious Big Dig was a union-only construction project thanks to a Massachusetts government-mandated PLA. The original $2.8 billion price tag for the project skyrocketed to $22 billion in state and federal taxpayer subsidies thanks in no small part to ballooning labor costs. In February, the Bay State’s Beacon Hill Institute found that PLAs added 12 percent to 18 percent to school construction costs in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In Washington, D.C., the Department of Veterans Affairs commissioned an independent study showing that PLAs would increase hospital construction costs by as much as 9 percent in some markets.
In short, Obama’s new Union Infrastructure Rescue Plan is a political favoritism scheme that raises the cost of doing business and bars tens of thousands of skilled, nonunion laborers who choose to run open shops from securing work. In the name of patching up America’s highways and byways, Mr. Fix It would create another gaping fiscal sinkhole to appease his special interest donors. Recovery Summer turns to Union Payback Fall.
Maybe this is how he is going to build his national army, from the ranks of the union thugs.
Well, when you are up to your neck in alligators, it is hard to remember that your objective was to drain the swamp.
Robert,
If you are suggesting that Obama is up to his neck (I believe the saying normally mentions a somewhat more vertically chanllenged body part), then I have a suggestion for the Swamp-drainer-in -Chief; quit incubating the alligators' eggs for them!
Keep in mind that Federal contracts normally stipulate that you have to pay Davis-Bacon wages, which are roughly twice the going rate in the industry. I just did my first contract with the Federal government, and I could have used some help, but I would have had to pay a day laborer $25/hour. Those wages go back to–do you know? Herbert Hoover. They were intended to help maintain wages during the Depression.
What they actually do is force private contractors to compete for labor with an organization–the Federal Government–which is unresponsive to market pressures. This in turn makes doing business harder, and leads to more business failures. Just one more side "benefit" of Keynesian socialism.