By Dave Everett | The Port strike is finally over. So what did we learn?
Well one lesson we learned is that any union will shut down the ports at the drop of a hat and all the other unions will support their “brothers” in organized labor.
This port-wide shutdown seems odd because time after time, I attend meetings at the Port of Long Beach, where deals are proposed to give Big Labor control over construction projects and one of the main justifications is that the Port Commissioners are receiving jobsite certainty that the workers will not strike. These deals are called Project Labor Agreements, or PLAs, and they discriminate against non-union workers.
Aside from the fact that threatening to strike unless you sign a deal that discriminates against non-union workers is veiled extortion, the claim that there will be no future strikes rings hollow after watching Big Labor bosses shut down the gateway to 40 percent of the goods in the nation during the busiest shopping time of the year. Are we to believe that construction crews would have walked right past their “union brothers” striking from their clerical work job? We all intuitively know that is not the case.
So if avoiding labor stoppages isn’t the point of these discriminatory Project Labor Agreements, (often times they are renamed Community Benefit Agreements to avoid public scrutiny as was done with the so-called High Speed Rail project) then why sign them?
Is it just to curry favor with Big Labor? Oftentimes the answer is “yes” for local politicians looking to move to higher office. They give Big Labor a special interest, insider deal on the construction, and Big Labor finances the local politician’s run for higher office.
But the silver lining of this costly strike may be to have pulled back the curtain on the PLA Wizard of Oz. It is clear now that theses special interest deals that discriminate against non-union workers are not meant to prevent strikes or work stoppages. Instead, they are nothing more than an excuse to fund more overspending and excess from Big Labor bosses––at the taxpayers and American consumers’ expense.
Dave Everett is the Government Affairs Director for the Associated Builders and Contractors in Southern California.