In a move guaranteeing that last year’s bipartisan infrastructure package will give less bang for its trillion bucks, President Biden last Friday signed an executive order requiring every federally funded construction job above $35 million in cost to be governed by a Project Labor Agreement — which is essentially a license for labor-union blackmail.
Federal construction is already covered by “prevailing wage” laws that impose “list” union pay rates (even as union workers regularly agree to work for less on private projects), markedly boosting costs. But Biden’s move adds to the markup.
A PLA involves the contractor negotiating everything with unions ahead of time: pay, work conditions, minimum qualifications for workers and more, down to how many “coffee Sherpas” need to be on site. Unions use them to exact every possible advantage before work can even begin.
Biden pretends it’s a money-saver, just as he calls his Afghan bugout a great success. Then why the need to force contractors to do it?
The White House says the order will immediately cover $262 billion in federal building contracts and nearly 200,000 workers, but it will also hit new jobs begun under the trillion-dollar infrastructure law.
And much of the windfall for the unions will be spent on electing Democrats, as with virtually all union political spending — so that the Dems can send yet more cash the unions’ way; rinse and repeat. (This though union members have far more diverse views.)
It’s a Ponzi scheme exploiting the very taxpayers and workers whom Dems pretend to serve.