Obama Gives Unions a ‘Massive Payback’ with Executive Order, Contractors Claim
The executive order, implemented in mid-April, encourages federal agencies to use “project labor agreements” or PLAs on their construction projects, which could require any non-union workers to pay into ailing union pension funds and follow work guidelines set out by a union.
By Christopher Neefus at CNSNews.com
The nation’s non-union contractors, who constitute the bulk of the construction industry, say President Obama has given a “massive payback” to unions by implementing an executive order that would help them secure billions of dollars in construction contracts on public projects — and a House Republican congressman agrees.
The executive order, implemented in mid-April, encourages federal agencies to use “project labor agreements” or PLAs on their construction projects, which could require any non-union workers to pay into ailing union pension funds and follow work guidelines set out by a union.
Ben Brubeck, who is director of the labor and federal procurement department at the Association of Builders and Contractors (ABC), says the move is unfair to non-union workers who represent about 85 percent of the construction industry.
“PLAs basically discourage or cut competition from all of those potential (non-unionized) employees,” he told CNSNews.com before the implementation, “while a small group of employees are getting a massive payback and really getting a huge advantage.”
On a conference call with reporters this week, Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) agreed, telling CNSNews.com he believes the new policy will aid unions, whom he says are “scrambling” to make their under-funded pension plans solvent by adding new contributors through PLAs.
Union pension plans, Kline said, are “grotesquely under-funded.”
“(Unions) are desperate,” Kline said. “(T)he real solution here is for them to seriously look at the benefits and renegotiate the exorbitant benefits that they’re getting — in other words tightening their belt –and they’ve been unwilling to do that, so they’re scrambling for anything else to make these things solvent.”
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