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Looks good for passage of PLA in Ingham County, Board chair says

Date Posted: May 8 2009

MASON – Despite a lobbying campaign by the anti-union Associated Builders and Contractors, “it appears that there is support” by a majority of the Ingham County Board of Commissioners for passage of a project labor agreement governing construction work sponsored by the county.

So said Board of Commissioners Chairperson Debbie De Leon on April 29, who added, “I do believe a PLA will be approved in the end.”

The commission talked about a PLA policy at its meeting on April 21, and heard from representatives supporting both sides of the issue. Union members filled the seats in the audience to support a PLA policy. The matter was referred to the County Services Committee. De Leon said commissioners are working on details for a PLA policy, including setting a project cost level to determine when a PLA would be instituted.

“We need to strengthen and better define our contracting policy,” De Leon said. “We need more oversight and control over projects.”

De Leon said the county has had its share of difficulty with contractors. Most prominently, she said a county fairgrounds electrical project started last July “still might not be completed,” adding that there were problems with quality of materials, among others. Shepherding a PLA policy into law in Ingham County has been a project of IBEW Local 665 Assistant Business Manager Tom Eastwood. “What started off as a simple concern regarding one particular contractor turned into the county drafting a new procurement policy for construction,” he said.

He has been working on getting a PLA adopted with IBEW Local 665 President Ray Michaels and Local 665 Business Manager Scott Clark. “The county is looking for value-added benefits to their contracting,” said Michaels. “A project labor agreement is a tool that will allow the Board of Commissioners to set standards for the contractors they hire. It’s a smart business decision.”

Michaels pointed out that in recent years, Michigan State University, Lansing Community College, Sparrow Hospital and the ongoing Accident Fund Headquarters renovation project in downtown Lansing have all implemented project labor agreements.

Anytime a PLA comes up for review before a public body, the anti-union Associated Builders and Contractors are not far behind. Afraid of having nonunion contractors shut out of work, the ABC usually claims project labor agreements discriminate against nonunion contractors and lead to higher costs for taxpayers.

“We don’t think it’s appropriate to establish a bias one way or the other,” said Chris Fisher, president of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Michigan, to the Lansing State Journal.

The ABC might not think it’s “appropriate,” but numerous companies, large and small, as well as state and local governments across the nation have adopted PLAs. And the U.S. Supreme Court has validated the use of PLAs by federal, state and local governments.

Project labor agreements vary, but they generally set rules and standards governing worker training, wages, working conditions, and drug and alcohol testing. Basically PLAs give an employer or purchaser of construction services a set of standards for the contractors they hire, and they give themselves a reasonable assurance of a quality workforce that will add value to their job by doing it on time and on budget – the first time.

In return, workers are generally assured a prevailing wage and contractually approved working conditions, usually with no-strike language.

“Big users of construction, pretty smart people, have looked at PLAs and decided that they add value, and it gives them bang for the buck,” Michaels said. “The ABC is just a small special interest group. I don’t think they have any interest in standards, oversight or accountability.”

Eastwood credited Dan Stuart of Construction Industry Consultants, Ed Haynor from the West Michigan Construction Alliance and Todd McCastle of the Carpenters for their contributions to the effort.

De Leon said that a petition submitted by the ABC urging the Ingham County Commission to reject the project labor agreement policy had little effect on the commission – especially after staffers did some research. “Many of the vendors didn’t even have a construction component,” De Leon said. One of the signers of the ABC petition, she said, represented a moving company. Only a handful of those companies, she said, had ever placed bids on county construction work.