Political Quotes

“In 2009, the President issued Executive Order 13502, which strongly encourages Federal agencies to require project labor agreements, or PLAs, on Federal construction projects exceeding $25 million in cost. This amendment simply states, as already read, that none of the funds made available by this act may be used to implement or enforce this executive order. Now, project labor agreements, Mr. Chair, discourage what is called a merit shop contractor from bidding on taxpayer-funded construction contracts. Let me be clear. That means, if you don't have a union, you can't even bid. By the way, the vast majority of all work conducted in the United States, private or government, is conducted by nonunion contractors. It is not meant to disparage unions. It is just saying that there should be open competition for everybody. Because it is a limited competition, it actually drives up the cost that each of us pay for the construction, somewhere between 12 and 18 percent, needlessly. Even if it is only 12 percent, why pay it? It results in fewer infrastructure improvements simply because there is just not as much money because we are paying more for the ones that we are doing. It is a project-specific collective bargaining agreement with multiple unions that is unique only to the construction industry. It is done nowhere else, only in the construction industry. Now, the NLRA permits construction employees to execute a PLA, a project labor agreement, voluntarily.…”