The use of Project Labor Agreements in Chicago have proven to be a guarantee for success.

Saving the Big Apple, one job at a time

The first ever meeting of its kind to talk about and better understand PLAs and how they're good business

A Strategic Partnership between API and America's Building Trades Unions

The Ivy League continues to be ahead of the curve - thanks to the Building Trades

See what's happening at the VW Plant in Tennessee

A great example of your funds at work

The BCTD's new Core-Curriculum program is changing lives

In California, PLAs are a prime example of "Value on Display. Every Day."

This is the 10th anniversary of the California portion of this conference and the first year women from across the country were invited

Pride, Performance, Professionalism

Today, various Executive Council Committees began to lay the framework for the future of organized labor in America.

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The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) today released a new study which purports to show that Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) dramatically increase the cost of school construction projects in the state of California.  The study, Measuring the Cost of Project Labor Agreements on School Construction in California (Vince Vasquez, Dr. Dale Glaser, and W. Erik Bruvold; 2011), was immediately called into question because the study's authors misrepresented the findings of another researcher they had cited.

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The continuing and unfounded criticisms of the Dulles Rail extension Project Labor Agreement (PLA) by public officials in Virginia demonstrate an embarrassing lack of knowledge and familiarity with the project itself; the U.S. construction industry as it exists today; and more importantly the greater Washington DC construction market.

We convene this conference during what is arguably the most critical moment in history for America’s Building Trades Unions and for all of organized labor. Not only are we continuing to struggle against an enduring economic downturn that has devastated our ranks.

Under the cover of darkness, and at the urging of Governor Scott Walker, Republicans in the Wisconsin State Senate on March 9th exercised the nuclear option to ram through a bill attacking Wisconsin’s working families. These events, along with similar ones playing out in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and a host of other states, have demonstrated that radical right-wing conservatives are intent to do or say anything to push through an extreme agenda that is nothing more than an outright attack on the sole entity left in American society that has the ability to "check and balance" their aspirations for complete economic and political power - America's labor unions.

In early morning hours of February 19, as the U.S. House of Representatives engaged in a marathon session to enact FY 2011 appropriations legislation that would keep the federal government operating this year, America’s Building Trades Unions secured two tremendous victories. Two separate amendments, one designed to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act and the other designed to deny funds for any federal PLA projects, were defeated with significant bipartisan support.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose…by any other name would smell as sweet." In other words, Shakespeare was implying that a name is simply an artificial and meaningless convention.

Ever since President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order encouraging the use of project labor agreement on federal construction projects, the Associated Builders and Contractors have ratcheted up their shrill and unfounded criticisms against what they say are “anti-competitive” government-mandated PLAs. In the ABC’s warped world, PLAs are nothing more than “special interest schemes” and “political payback” to America’s Building Trades Unions from politicians who may have received labor’s support.

By any objective measure, our national economy is not in recovery, but rather is still in serious trouble.  The latest July figures from the U.S. Department of Labor show that unemployment remains at a very high 9.5%, while in the construction industry the jobless rate continues to hover at or near 20% nationwide and many of the unemployed have been without a job for over 6 months.  The skilled construction workers who have built this great country are growing increasingly desperate, and yet, politicians of both parties and the mainstream media are ignoring their suffering.