Merit Shops Remain Target of Job Discrimination
Early this morning, the Legislature failed to pass legislation that expressly allows project labor agreements on public construction. The formal legislative session, set to end last night, extended until about 10 a.m. today.
Bottom line 1: Bidding on public construction continues under current state laws with no changes. PLAs remain a violation of the public bidding laws, unless the project meets the standards set by the state's highest court. If you see or hear of a PLA, contact MCA immediately.
Bottom line 2: PLA legislation may have stalled out in this year's legislative session, but the unions will bring it back next year. The fight will continue, and you can help by speaking to your legislators. Let them know this legislation hurts merit shop workers.
Here's how the events unfolded:
· The House and Senate both added PLA amendments to their versions of an omnibus Economic Development Bill in June and July.
· MCA joined other trade associations and merit shops in urging the Legislature to reverse course and not legalize PLAs.
· House and Senate negotiators, tasked with ironing out differences between the competing versions of the Economic Development bill, failed to reach a compromise.
· The Econ. Dev. bill failed to pass, taking the PLA langauge with it.
· Early this morning, the House of Representatives stripped out the PLA language and passed it as its own bill.
· For reasons unclear at this time, the Senate leadership refused to consider the House bill before the close of the Senate's last formal session for the year.
· The House and Senate will continue to meet in informal sessions for the rest of the year. Informal sessions have no formal votes, so any legislation must pass unanimously in a voice vote.
If PLA proponents try to pass the PLA in informal session, a single represntative or senator can object and stop it.
No Apprenticeship Mandate on Public Housing Projects
At the urging of MCA and public housing authotiries, a legislative conference committee stripped an apprenticeship mandate from a housing bond bill that passed the Houes and Senate and now moves to the Governor for her signature.
Language in the House version would have required contractors in public housing construction projects to have a state-registered apprenticeship program. While MCA strongly supports apprenticeships and training, such a provision would lock-out a majority of contractors from bidding on public housing work. In fact, the public housing authorities opposed the measure because it would block more than 90% of its conttractors from bidding. This would raise costs and delay projects.
In a letter to legislators, MCA also pointed out the measure ran counter to a precedent-setting ruling in MCA vs. Quincy. In that case, the federal appeals court upheld a lower-court ruling that such apprenticeship mandates violate the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
Like PLAs, apprenticeship mandates are another way that organized labor weaponizes public policy in order to lock out merit shops and create an unfair advantage for union contractors.
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