Peoria Pundit

From the Wall Street Journal:

The candidate has struggled to strike the right tone on organized labor. Thursday’s crowd was particularly receptive as Mr. Romney said he would pursue right-to-work laws and forbid unions from collecting dues that could be used for political purposes.

“If I become president of the United States, I will curb the practice we have in this country of giving union bosses an unfair advantage in contracting,” Mr. Romney said. “One of the first things that I will do – actually on Day One- is I will end the government’s favoritism towards unions in contracting on federal projects.” The audience responded with a standing ovation.

Daily Kos explained what it all means:

Romney was referring there to Project Labor Agreements, agreements that set uniform standards for all workers, union and non-union and from different trades, on a large construction project. They promote efficiency on projects involving multiple contractors and avert strikes and other labor disputes; additionally, they can contain provisions calling for jobs to be filled by local workers or, as in a recent Los Angeles PLA, people from economically disadvantaged communities.

The Associated Builders and Contractors really hates PLAs, even though PLAs include non-union workers, as part of a more general hatred of unions and workplace safety regulations and prevailing wage laws and really anything else that protects workers. But it’s important to understand that the ABC is not the voice of the construction industry. Though the organization tries to present itself that way, a forthcoming (not yet available online) independent report by Thomas Kriger, a professor at the National Labor College, finds that if the ABC’s claim to represent “23,000 merit shop construction and construction related firms” is true, it represents just 0.03 percent of the nearly 800,000 construction firms in the country. There is not a single state in which more than 6 percent of licensed or registered contractors are ABC members.

Not only that, the ABC does not appear to define “construction related firms” in the way that most of us would: Its members include 59 banks Freddie’s Bar-B-Que of Sapulpa, Oklahoma, the Land and Sea Restaurant of Corpus Christi, Texas, and the Rose of Sharon European Florist of Jacksonville, Florida. In fact, there are only six states in which 75 percent or more of ABC members are actually contractors.

But that’s OK, blue-collar construction trades worker. Go ahead and vote for Romney. Because Obama wants to take away your guns (which he doesn’t) or because he wants to abort your fetus (he doesn’t want that either).

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 25th, 2012 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Labor, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.