Biden Seeks to Give Union Allies New Monopoly on Billions of Dollars in Federal Contracts

Concrete trucks sit inside the World Trade Center construction area in New York on Aug. 2, 2011. Construction on the 800,000-square-foot transit hub at the World Trade Center reportedly stopped when concrete workers from local unions went on strike Aug. 1, in protest of a contract that expired on June 30. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

President Joe Biden’s appointees at the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council (FARC) have proposed a new rule that would allow only companies with unionized workforces to bid on new government contracts worth $35 million or more annually.

The FARC proposal implements Biden’s executive order No. 14063, which requires project labor agreements (PLA) on all “large-scale” federal construction projects. Use of a PLA in a federal contract would mean that only companies with unionized employees would be eligible to bid on and be selected for a federal project.

Biden’s executive order was signed in February, but it wasn’t until August that the Department of Defense, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the General Services Administration, which oversees most non-defense federal acquisitions, proposed implementing the rule.

“Such agreements avoid labor-related disruptions on projects by using dispute-resolution processes to resolve worksite disputes and by prohibiting work stoppages, including strikes and lockouts,” the executive order states. “They secure the commitment of all stakeholders on a construction site that the project will proceed efficiently without unnecessary interruptions.

“They also advance the interests of project owners, contractors, and subcontractors, including small businesses. For these reasons, owners and contractors in both the public and private sector routinely use project labor agreements, thereby reducing uncertainties in large-scale construction projects.”

The executive order applies only to federal construction projects, but if the FARC rule becomes law, it could become a precedent for extending the PLA requirement to all projects that receive any federal funding.

Officials with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTWLDF), however, said in a statement that the comments it filed opposing the FARC proposal “explain six ways in which the proposed rule violates federal law, particularly noting that the PLA requirement ‘will serve only to harm construction workers who reject union representation,’ arguing they will be ’subjected to unwanted union representation; forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment in non-Right to Work states ... and will have large portions of their compensation diverted to union pension plans from which they will receive no benefits,' among other things.”

A total of 27 of the nation’s 50 states currently have right-to-work laws that bar forcing employees to join a union as a condition of their employment.

In addition, the statement said the foundation’s comments also point out that the proposed rule “violates the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA), a federal law intended to improve costs by increasing competition for federal contracts.”

“The comments state that shrinking the pool of contractors to only those that are willing to give in to union boss demands ‘will inevitably lead to increased contracting costs for the federal government,’ making the executive order and the rule it promulgates inconsistent with CICA,” the statement reads.

The foundation further noted that “between 2009 and 2021, federal contracting officers—who are trained to award contracts to bidders that provide the best value to the government—required the use of PLAs in only 12 out of the approximately 2,000 instances where a federal construction project cost $25 million or more.”

Officials with Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), which represents construction industry firms, are also highly critical of PLAs and opposed to the Biden proposal.

In a September survey of its members, ABC found that 98 percent of its members oppose the proposal.

“The overwhelming opposition to PLA mandates demonstrates that fair and open competition on federal and federally assisted infrastructure projects is a win-win for taxpayers and the U.S. economy because it ensures all Americans and qualified companies are welcome to fairly compete to rebuild America’s infrastructure,” Ben Brubeck, ABC’s vice president of regulatory, labor, and state affairs, said in an analysis on the company website.

“In contrast, the Biden administration’s proposed rule requiring government-mandated PLAs on federal contracts of $35 million or more, and other policies promoting PLAs on federally assisted construction projects, will needlessly increase costs by 12 percent to 20 percent and reduce competition from quality contractors and the 87.4 percent of construction workers who freely choose not to join a union.”

A spokesperson for FARC couldn’t be reached for comment.

Biden has been a close ally of organized labor throughout his 40-plus years in public life as a U.S. senator, as vice president under President Barack Obama, and as president.

“I make no apologies; I am a union man,” Biden told supporters at his first 2020 presidential campaign rally in Pittsburgh in April 2019.

Unions have been strong supporters of Biden as well, according to OpenSecrets.org.

“Biden took $1.3 million in direct contributions from labor PACs [political action committees] and those affiliated with unions during his 2020 campaign,“ Open Secrets reported. ”But he benefited from far more in unions’ outside spending.

“Priorities USA, a pro-Biden hybrid PAC, received $5 million from the Laborers’ International Union of North America, $1.8 million from the American Federation of State, City, and Municipal Employees, $1.5 million from the Service Employees International Union, and about $1 million from the National Association of Letter Carriers and the Teamsters.“

Mark Mix, president of NRTWLDF, told The Epoch Times that “estimates show that Big Labor spent at least $2 billion and as much as $12 billion on politics during the 2020 election cycle, money that was key to putting Joe Biden and other union cronies in office.”

For that reason, Mix said that the “discriminatory PLA rule is pure political payback to ensure similar union boss backing for the next election cycle, leaving the vast majority of American construction workers in the cold just so that union bosses can skim forced dues out of taxpayer-funded construction projects.”