The waste in
project labor agreements
By Warren Hardy
Several years
ago Clark County commissioners voted to require McCarran
International Airport to enter into a union-only Project Labor
Agreement (PLA) for several of their upcoming construction
projects. PLAs mandate that all workers (including non-union
workers) pay union dues, pay into union benefit packages and
that owners become signatory to union work rules while forcing
all apprentices to come through union apprenticeship programs.
However, PLAs
are better known nationally for their failure to deliver on
their promises and they are increasingly being recognized for
what they are — a tactic utilized by organized labor to secure
what is in essence a monopoly agreement for unions on public
work projects.
The net result
is taxpayers forking over millions of dollars they otherwise
would be able to keep in their wallets — all because of
decreased competition and increased costs. Obviously unions
love the agreements and, just as obviously, union-free
contractors and their employees, who make up more than 80
percent of the total industry, do not. Nor should the
taxpayer. What happened recently at McCarran adds additional
evidence to the failure of PLAs and their betrayal of the
taxpayer.
A few days ago,
bid results for one of the projects under the PLA at McCarran
were released. The advertised estimate for the Satellite D
Northwest Wing Addition was $70 million. Three bids were
received with the low bid coming in at $110.7 million or a
whopping 58 percent over the estimate. The most expensive bid
came in at $120.752 million, or 73 percent over the estimate.
More tax dollars for less project, this is the real legacy of
PLAs.
From the Big Dig
project in Boston, where a woman was recently killed due to
shoddy workmanship and where cost overruns were in the
billions, to school projects in Los Angeles, where
construction of new schools under the Los Angeles Unified
School District PLA are over budget by hundreds of millions of
dollars, the record of failure of PLAs is as long as it is
costly.
Sadly, we have
not learned from the experiences of others. In Clark County
the PLA at McCarran is costing local companies the opportunity
to bid work on a local project and it is costing local
breadwinners the ability to work on projects paid for with
their own tax dollars.
In the final
analysis the PLA has effectively shut out the more than 80
percent of the construction work force from participating in
these public works projects. The results are fewer companies
bidding with the few bids that are submitted coming in tens of
millions of dollars higher than anticipated. The airport
project is now going out to bid for the third time.
While this is
the right thing to do, this will prove to be an exercise in
futility unless the PLA is dropped from the proposal.
We respectfully
request that the Clark County commissioners throw out the
agreement they signed in anticipation of the efficiencies
promised by PLA proponents, promises which are long since
broken. Enough is enough. There are companies right now
willing to bid on this work and the only thing standing
between them doing so — and the county saving millions — is a
discriminatory PLA that has now sadly, but not surprisingly,
been added to the long list of national PLA failures.
Warren Hardy is
president of the Las Vegas chapter of the Associated Builders
and Contractors Inc.
