PROJECT LABOR AGREEMENTS MAKE OUR COMMUNITIES STRONGER AND HELP TO PROTECT TAXPAYERS AND WORKERS

Despite some of the myths being spread about Project Labor Agreements, here’s what they actually do to make Massachusetts communities stronger:

✓ Create competition:
Any contractor—union or nonunion—can be on a job with a Project Labor Agreement. In fact, recent studies have shown that projects with PLA standards attract more bids and more competition than those without.

✓ Involve communities:
A PLA gives a municipality or other public entity a strong and democratic voice in the process to decide what standards for safety and worker treatment they find acceptable.

✓ Benefit taxpayers:
PLAs provide an accurate outline of the project’s schedule and budget so that taxpayers know what to expect. PLAs have proven time and again to keep projects on-time and on-budget by setting the standards from the beginning. A PLA keeps a project on schedule by guaranteeing an uninterrupted supply of highly skilled, trained and properly licensed local workers.

✓ Support workers:
Contractors must adhere to a uniform set of basic standards set under the Project Labor Agreement including fair wages, benefits, and other fees. This helps to eliminate wage theft and other dangers that hurt both workers and taxpayers on non-PLA jobs.

RHETORIC VS FACT

In 2021 when the Legislature was debating (and ultimately passed) legislation requiring a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) on the Holyoke Veterans Home Project, all kinds of anti-union rhetoric was hurled around about the imagined ills of PLAs. In November 2024, when the legislature passed a law allowing the use of Public PLAs, the same rhetoric arose. Now, with Governor Healey’s Executive order encouraging PLAs on state construction—no surprise—the same old, tired, misleading rhetoric.

Now that we have a Public PLA project well underway let’s take a look at the FACTS.

X RHETORIC: “PLAs drive up costs substantially” [Boston Globe, 5/25/21]

✓ FACT: The use of union labor reduces the total cost of projects by an average of 4 percent versus when open shop labor is used [Quantifying the Value of Union Labor in Construction Projects, IPA, December 2022]

✓ FACT: The Holyoke Veterans Home Project is on budget and 5 weeks ahead of schedule

X RHETORIC: “By limiting competition, PLAs drive up costs substantially,” [Boston Globe, 5/25/21]

✓ FACT: A recent study analyzing 773 public building projects in Illinois revealed that “PLAs increased bid competition by an average of 14 percent” and “helped to lower costs for taxpayers—with each additional bid improving the likelihood that projects would come in below their engineer’s estimates by 6 percent.” [The Impacts Of Project Labor Agreements On Costs, Competition, And Contractors In Illinois 3/6/2025]

X RHETORIC: “Another claim is that union workers are better trained. But open-shop tradespeople are subject to all the same state training requirements” [Commonwealth Beacon, 3/29/21]

✓ FACT: 75% of all apprentices in Massachusetts are union members being trained in union apprenticeship programs (Source: Mass Division of Apprentice Standards)

✓ FACT: Productivity for union labor is 14 percent higher versus open shop labor [Quantifying the Value of Union Labor in Construction Projects, IPA, December 2022]