Chuck Grassley: “I come to the Senate to bring up the issue of how the Congress--on a piece of legislation that I am part of--and how…”

“I come to the Senate to bring up the issue of how the Congress--on a piece of legislation that I am part of--and how President Trump can help the economy through helping small business. President Biden issued an Executive order in February of 2022. That Executive order required what is called the project labor agreements, or PLAs, on Federal projects over $35 million. Just to be clear, I meant that Executive order requires project labor agreements. I opposed this Executive order at that time, and I joined a letter with my colleagues, telling President Biden what a bad idea that was. I believe the Trump administration should deregulate this Biden Executive order. Project labor agreements are a sort of backdoor way to give unionized contractors a leg up on Federal contracts in competition with nonunion contractors. Plus, there is too much redtape for a business to comply. Public project labor agreements effectively make it impossible for a contractor to compete for Federal contracts if its workforce isn't unionized. So it is kind of like a union shop outlawed by the Taft- Hartley Act in right-to-work States. About 27 States have right-to-work laws. Well, most of the workforce in Iowa isn't unionized. This Executive order seems to assume that every workforce should be unionized, and Iowa happens to be a right-to-work State. It happens that I support the right of workers to organize. I joined a union from 1962 to 1971.…”