Strengthening and Mandating Project Labor Agreements
Creating Worker Power with Government Contracting and Spending Policy
This is the sixth in an 11-part series on labor policy for the Green New Deal. As a trade union lawyer and climate activist, I believe we need to have a bold plan for climate action coupled with rewriting the rules governing our economy. In the spirit of Bernie’s Green New Deal policy (although written independently and before its release), this series proposes specific policy solutions to advance worker power alongside environmental stewardship.
(4) to achieve the Green New Deal goals and mobilization, a Green New Deal will require the following goals and projects— . . .
(G) ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hires local workers, offers training and advancement opportunities, and guarantees wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition[.][1]
Strengthen and Mandate Project Labor Agreements
Project labor agreements (PLAs) are generally pre-hire agreements where contractors agree to use union labor, at certain wage rates and other terms of employment. But they are only for one project, and they are usually in the construction sector. There is also a recurring problem with PLAs, where a contractor will sign a PLA and commit to use union labor for that one project, but then turn around and use non-union labor for its other projects, either using the same company or an alter ego. The weakness of 8(f) collective bargaining agreements[1] is that they allow for such limited arrangements, and in places where the building-trades are weak, too many unions have settled for this status quo.
We should adopt an enhanced PLA policy, which requires “enhanced” PLAs on all federal-supported projects.[2] Enhanced PLAs would create durable collective bargaining relationships for construction contractors and for the ultimate operators of the projects, as described below.
First, to be eligible for a government construction contract, or contracts on projects supported by other grants or tax abatements, [3] a contractor should have to show that it has a preexisting 9(a) collective bargaining relationship[4] covering substantially all of their workers in the classifications that would work on the project, whether or not they work on a PLA project.
Second, the ultimate owner or operator of the site should have to show that they and any subcontractors have one or more collective bargaining agreements or neutrality agreements for the employees who will work at that site after its completion. The contracts would be established either through a preexisting collective bargaining relationship or through neutrality agreements negotiated with labor unions which cover those employees.
Here’s how this would work in practice. Say the government requires private businesses to modernize their buildings to increase energy efficiency and offers a grant program to defray some of the cost for eligible businesses. A large hotel applies for a grant. To be eligible for the money, each of the contractors retrofitting the hotel must have an established collective bargaining relationship covering substantially all of their workers, and the hotel must also have a collective bargaining relationship or neutrality agreement covering substantially all of its workers.
This ensures that government assistance goes only to high-road employers. By tying government spending to this type of enhanced project labor agreement, we can systematically build worker power and raise wages by facilitating self-organization.
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[1] An 8(f) collective bargaining agreement is a pre-hire CBA which only construction unions are allowed to use, which comes with far fewer rights for the union—most notably that the employer can repudiate the collective bargaining relationship at the end of the contract’s term unless the union has changed the relationship to a standard one under 9(a). See 29 U.S.C. §§ 158(f), 159(a).
[3] Some PLA policy has included contractual minimums for the PLA requirements to apply, but there is no need to write the policy that way. For example, President Obama’s Executive Order 13502 recommended that agencies consider using PLAs on projects over $25 million. See Executive Order 13502—Use of Project Labor Agreements for Federal Construction Projects (Feb. 6, 2009), available athttps://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-13502-use-project-labor-agreements-for-federal-construction-projects.
[4] A 9(a) collective bargaining relationship is the standard labor union relationship that most private-sector unions enjoy. It endures past an individual contract and grants certain additional rights and protections to workers and labor unions.