PLA = Union Ripoff

Today’s Washington Examiner features a very good editorial on the District of Columbia’s consideration of Public Labor Agreements in its proposed $2.3 billion school facility modernization program. As the Examiner notes:

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…

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.