Dangers of PLA
National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation VP Stefan Gleason talks to Lou Dobbs about Project Labor Agreements, a new set of presidential guidelines designed to ensure unionized corporations get special access to lucrative government contracts.
Anti-competitive project labor agreements (PLAs) are special interest schemes that end open, fair and competitive bidding on public works projects. PLAs drive up the cost of construction by reducing competition and effectively excluding merit shop contractors and their skilled employees from building projects paid for by their own tax dollars.
Typical PLAs are pre-hire contracts that require projects be awarded only to contractors and subcontractors that agree to:
• Recognize unions as the representatives of their employees on that job.
• Use the union hiring hall to obtain workers.
• Obtain apprentices exclusively from union apprenticeship programs.
• Pay into underfunded and mismanaged union benefit plans.
• Obey costly, restrictive and inefficient union work rules.
In the end, government-mandated PLAs prevent taxpayers from getting the best possible product at the best possible price.