After allowing far too many of its public schools to fall into inexcusable disrepair, the District of Columbia is finally on the verge of an ambitious $2.3 billion school modernization program. But Project Labor Agreements should not be part of it. Because Project Labor Agreements require that all construction workers be hired through unions, they typically result in budget overruns and higher costs. And while $2.3 billion is a lot of money, the city can’t afford to waste a dime of it.
Project Labor Agreements also make it difficult for small, non-unionized companies to compete. Associated Builders and Contractors, a D.C.-based trade group, says Project Labor Agreements discriminate against 80 percent of their members, who are forced to pay for their employees’ current health and pension benefits in addition to those required by the union. One estimate put this extra cost at $80,000 per month for a firm with just 100 nonunion employees.
That’s exactly what happened to several minority-owned District companies that were frozen out of bidding on their own hometown baseball stadium because of the project’s Project Labor Agreement, even though some of these D.C. entrepreneurs had prior experience working on the Camden Yards project in Baltimore.
There are other compelling arguments against using Project Labor Agreements. The Public Interest Institute found the Project Labor Agreement adopted for the Iowa Events Center project in downtown Des Moines was “an unnecessary burden on the workers, businesses and taxpayers of Iowa.” Opening ceremonies were 3 1/2 months late, Iowa taxpayers were forced to absorb an almost $1 million shortfall and there were 232 accidents — one fatal — on the job.
Another study by the Boston-based Beacon Hill Institute in April 2006 found that Project Labor Agreements raised the base construction bids of schools in New York by 20 percent — or $27 per square foot. “The potential savings for not entering into a PLA on a school construction project range from $2.7 million for a 100,000 -quare-foot structure to $8.1 million for a 300,000-square-foot structure,” the study noted. With $8.1 million, each new District school could have enough textbooks, computers and athletic gear for every child.
So the question for Mayor Adrian Fenty and members of the D.C. Council and the D.C. Board of Education is this: Will you spend that 20 percent on out-of-town union workers or the District’s long-neglected children?
