Of Hard Hats And Biotech
Why Bristol-Meyers bothered with labor agreement on Devens project
In their long, unsuccessful fight to make Worcester rebid the construction of the Union Station parking garage, the nonunion contractors that make up the Merit Construction Alliance took it as a given that project labor agreements are worse than worthless.
They argue that PLAs - which require contractors to hire employees through union hiring halls and abide by certain union rules while demanding that workers refrain from strikes and job actions - represent nothing but an expensive government sop to deep-pocketed labor.
While the city officials behind the parking garage maintain that its high costs are a result of their design specifications, not the PLA, to many what the MCA says rings true. It seems to make sense that government bureaucrats would embrace an agreement benefiting organized labor despite inefficiencies and high costs.
Against The Grain
As instinctively right as that argument may sound, it does little to explain one of the most recent project labor agreements signed in the state. The Bristol-Myers Squibb plant in Devens, almost universally cited as a symbol of innovative, efficient private industry coming to Massachusetts, will be built under a PLA. But why?
Bristol Myers spokesman Jeff MacDonald says it was the decision of the project's general contractor, construction giant Parsons, to sign the agreement. He said Bristol-Myers itself couldn't care less whether its projects use union or nonunion labor.
"We don't really have a position as far as using one or the other," he said. "We work with both."
So why did Parsons chose a PLA? Perhaps with an eye to the firestorms that unions and nonunion contractors create around the issue, the company referred questions back to Bristol-Myers, which issued a vague statement citing "labor continuity" on the complex project.
Matt Grew, the spokesman for the Mass-achusetts Chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors, a nonunion contractors group, says he doesn't have any idea why Parsons signed the agreement. But he says the PLA almost certainly wasn't the result of the negotiations with government officials that brought Bristol-Myers to the state. He notes that the agreement was worked out under the Romney administration, which was certainly not known as a friend of organized labor.
Whatever Parsons' reasons, Grew suggests BMS is not alone.
"The PLAs are becoming more and more common," he said.
And despite the fact that PLAs involving government projects generate the most headlines, a 2001 study by the California Research Bureau (a subdivision of the state's library system that does research for state officials) says that private projects - at least in California - are much more likely to use the agreements than public ones.
Pervasive PLAs
"Private project owners specifically request that contractors use PLAs for economic reasons, labor stability and cost and scheduling considerations," the study says. "Owners increasingly want PLAs in order to meet their speed-to-market demands and to ensure against delays that can be caused by worker shortages, work stoppages or collective bargaining negotiations."
In other words, the agreements don't just create obligations for owners and contractors, they also let them set down their own rules to keep big, complicated jobs running efficiently.
Many debates about PLAs are frustratingly difficult to settle. Nonunion construction contractors claim that 80 percent of construction workers are nonunion, and thus barred from PLA projects, while unions, drawing on different data, say the industry is more like 70 or 80 percent organized. Unions say PLAs make sure workers get fair pay and benefits, and nonunion contractors respond that workers at publicly financed projects are paid union rates no matter what because of prevailing wage laws. And for every school construction project that the anti-union factions say was massively overpriced because of a PLA, unions cite one like Marlborough's Algonquin Regional High School, where they say the lack of a PLA left contractors unable to hire enough workers and contributed to a fiasco of inefficiency.
Regardless of how much truth lies on either side of those arguments, though, some in charge of private projects seem to have decided, with both eyes on the bottom line, that agreeing to some rules on how to treat workers can make the delay- and complication-prone process of building a big facility just a little simpler.
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