President Obama executive order favors "union-only" contracts

Last week, President Obama signed an executive order that will likely result in higher taxpayer costs for federally-funded construction projects. The Kansas City Star has the story:

President Barack Obama on Friday issued an executive order backing the use of union labor for large-scale federal construction projects.

The order encourages federal agencies to have construction contractors and subcontractors enter project labor agreements. Those agreements require contractors to negotiate with union officials, recognize union wages and benefits and generally abide by collective-bargaining agreements. ...

Naturally, the Teamsters are happy:

"Project labor agreements are a win-win for everyone involved," said James Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. "Contractors get highly trained, skilled labor with fixed costs, and workers are fairly compensated with their rights and safety protected."

While the Associated Builders and Contractors trade group points out that

"Today's decision to repeal Executive Order 13202 opens the door to waste and discrimination in federal and federally funded construction contracts," said ABC President and CEO Kirk Pickerel. "This action removes the safeguards that prohibited discrimination based upon union affiliation in the awarding of federal contracts.

"Construction contracts subject to union-only PLAs [project labor agreements] are designed to be awarded exclusively to unionized contractors and their all-union workforces," said Pickerel. "Absent the economic benefits of competitive bidding, union-only PLAs are known to increase construction costs between 10 percent and 20 percent and discriminate against minorities, women and qualified construction workers who have traditionally been excluded from union membership.

"Union-only PLAs drive up costs for American taxpayers while unfairly discriminating against 84 percent of U.S. construction workers who choose not to join a labor union," added Pickerel. "All taxpayers should have the opportunity to compete fairly on any project funded by the federal government."

Bottom line: all those "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects probably just went up in price. Arbeit macht frei.