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.