The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) led 22 organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Construction Industry Round Table, in a letter to President-elect Donald Trump urging him to repeal President Biden’s SWACCA-supported Executive Order creating a presumption that project labor agreements (PLAs) will be used on large scale federal construction projects valued at $35 million or more.
The letter argues that “PLAs exacerbate the construction industry’s estimated skilled labor shortage of more than half a million workers by unfairly discouraging competition from quality non-union contractors and their employees, who comprise 89.3% of the private U.S. construction workforce.” The ABC-led letter calls on President-elect Trump to undo President Biden’s “rampant special-interest favoritism” by issuing a new executive order “that restricts government-mandated PLAs and to restore robust fair and open competition on federal and federally-assisted construction projects.”