Virginia delegate Tim Hugo is calling for an investigation into the Dulles Metrorail project and the Metropolitian Washington Airport Authority’s demand that the project be governed by a wasteful Project Labor Agreement (PLA) that will drive up the price…
Project Labor Agreements (PLAs), kickbacks to Big Labor unions that drive up the cost of construction projects by nearly 25% have been banned in Tennessee thanks to legislation signed into law by Gov. Bill Haslam. Tennessee is the fourth…
Project Labor Agreements (PLAs), kickbacks to Big Labor unions that drive up the cost of construction projects by nearly 25% have been banned in Tennessee thanks to legislation signed into law by Gov. Bill Haslam. Tennessee is the fourth…
Big labor threw the kitchen sink in the fight to prevent Republicans from gaining a majority in Congress but there are still two dozen Republican members who seem prepared to carry the water for the union…
Rather than deal with many of the fiscal issues brought about by unsustainable congressional gifts to Big Government Union Bosses and their private sector Big Labor counterparts, Nancy Pelosi threatens to join the movement for a…
The Obama Administration is championing the construction and subsidization of Amtrak and high speed railroad. Not surprisingly, Big Labor is a big beneficiary of the scheme through the implementation of Project Labor Agreements that drive up the cost of construction…
WalMart’s efforts to open store in Chicago were ultimately successful but now we know why — the store buckled to union activists and agreed to pay inflated construction costs on the estimated $1 billion worth of construction during the next…
The December 2010 issue of The National Right to Work Committee Newsletter is available for download in an Adobe pdf format for your convenience to read and share. It is the Committee’s official newsletter publication that provides an excellent…
Ben Brubeck, writing at the Daily Caller, takes notice of another $3 million handout to the union bosses. Unfortunately, it is just the tip of the iceberg: Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, you just gave Big Labor a $3.3 million tip. Not for exceptional service, mind you. Just for wearing the union label. As part of the flood of taxpayer cash approved by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, the federal government has about $140 billion worth of federal and federally assisted construction projects to fund and oversee. Most of us would expect that such projects would be awarded to qualified bidders based on whichever contractor submits a bid delivering to taxpayers the best work at the best price. But that has not been the case under the Obama administration. After receiving major political dollars and support from Big Labor, President Obama signed Executive Order 13502 just 16 days after taking office. The order repealed a prior executive order in effect since 2001 that kept the government accountable by prohibiting government-mandated project labor agreements (PLAs) on at least $147.1 billion worth of federal construction projects. It had also ensured fair and open competition on hundreds of billions of dollars of important federally assisted schools, jails, bridges, roads and sewers in communities across the United States. Now, taxpayers are stuck with an executive order that encourages federal agencies, whenever possible, to require a union-favoring PLA on projects exceeding $25 million in total cost. Think of a government-mandated PLA as a stimulus package for Big Labor at the expense of taxpayers and the construction industry’s non-union workforce. PLA schemes discourage competition from qualified non-union contractors and ensure that most or all the workforce building the federal project will be union members hired through union hiring halls. Such favoritism steers lucrative federal contracts to unionized contractors and is especially appalling since just 14.5 percent of the U.S. private construction workforce belongs to a labor union.