[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4655-4656]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                VOTE AGAINST UNION-ONLY LABOR CONTRACTS

  (Mr. BALLENGER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, the President and the Vice President have 
worked diligently in the past few years to link Federal projects to 
union-only construction firms. Unfortunately, the Los Angeles Unified 
School District is following suit by proposing a new major $2.4 billion 
school construction initiative, using only unionized contractors.
  I say this is unfortunate because union-only contracts increase the 
cost of construction projects by limiting competition, which results in 
higher labor costs. It has been estimated by some that the union-only 
project labor agreement could increase the construction cost by 10 to 
15 percent. This means that funds aimed at building and renovating some 
of Los Angeles' schools would actually be lost to artificially high 
labor cost.
  I am a firm believer that the lowest qualified bidder for these 
building projects should be able to win the construction job, 
regardless of union affiliation. Quite frankly, I find it against

[[Page 4656]]

the American spirit of healthy competition to put rules in place that 
work otherwise.
  I hope that when this project labor agreement is voted upon on the 
23rd of this month, the Los Angeles Unified School District will vote 
for the best interest of their students and against an anti-education 
project labor agreement.

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