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WHARTON SCHOOL STUDY FINDS THAT UNION-ONLY CONSTRUCTION AGREEMENTS HURT MASSACHUSETTS TAXPAYERS AND WORKERS
Burlington -- Union-only construction agreements raise costs on taxpayers and discriminate against the vast majority of Massachusetts construction workers while delivering none of the public policy benefits originally promised, according to a new study released today.
The year-long study was conducted by Dr. Herbert R. Northrup of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. It was commissioned by the Merit Construction Alliance (MCA), a non-profit association of Massachusetts contractors united by the belief that construction work should be awarded on the basis of merit.
Union-only construction agreements, called Project Labor Agreements (PLA), require the use of union contractors. PLAs were originated in Massachusetts with major projects like the clean-up of Boston Harbor and the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel project, but their use has spread in recent years to smaller state and even local projects.
"Restraints imposed by government-mandated project agreements are political decisions which have little or no economic rationale, nor can they be defended on grounds of labor peace, enhanced safety, or other such reasonable criteria," Northrup concluded in his report.
Northrup's study, the first authoritative examination of the construction labor market in Massachusetts, specifically found that PLAs:
Drive up construction costs for taxpayers by severely limiting competition. Among the evidence cited by Northrup was a renovation project involving Hyde Park High School in which the number of bidders increased by 60 percent and the lowest bids dropped by nearly 7 percent after the Superior Court threw out a PLA.
Discriminate against the vast majority of Massachusetts construction workers because four out of five are employed by open-shop contractors, who are shut out from even bidding on PLA projects.
Do not ensure greater quality or safety. In fact, open-shop fatalities were significantly lower than those of union contractors, according to the only statistical study of construction fatalities investigated by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
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Analysis of Contribution
Unions Gave Almost $10,000 To Worcester City Councilors;
Majority Of Unions Not From Worcester Area
Worcester -- Labor unions made $9,325 in political contributions to members of the Worcester City Council at the same time that City Manager Thomas Hoover was deciding to attach a union-only Project Labor Agreement to the vocational school project. The majority of those unions were not even from the Worcester area.
Those are the results of a study conducted by the Merit Construction Alliance (MCA), a non-profit association representing open-shop contractors, including those from the Worcester area.
"When voters go to the polls this fall, they should remember which councilors are indebted to a special interest and which councilors are indebted to the taxpayers," said Lawrence C. Allen, executive director of the MCA.
"Unions have every right to participate in the political process. But voters should wonder whether their tax dollars are being used to pay back union support," Allen added, referring to the fact that PLAs increase the cost of public construction.
The MCA study found that 52 percent of those unions making contributions to Worcester city councilors are from outside the Worcester area - calling into question claims by the unions that one of their goals in pushing initiatives such as PLAs is to protect local workers.
"Voters should wonder why unions from Boston and even as far away as Connecticut are giving money to city councilors from Worcester. The answer is that PLAs are about union jobs, not local jobs," Allen said, adding that union contractors employ only 20 percent of the construction workforce in Massachusetts.
www.ma-mca.org |
