Non-union contractors suffered a harmful, short-sighted defeat in the U.S. Supreme Court this week. So did taxpayers. The blow was administered when justices ruled that state and local government agencies may sign union labor agreements covering everybody on large public works projects. The result may be a great deal more expense on such projects.
The decision arose out of the $6.1 billion, 10-year project to clean up Boston Harbor. The project was undertaken by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority after lawsuits dictated the end of dumping sewage in the harbor. A giant water treatment plant is to be built on property owned by the authority.In 1998, the authority hired a private contractor, Kaiser Engineers, Inc., to manage all construction. Kaiser negotiated a master union agreement for the whole project with the Building and Construction Trades Council, a group of area trade unions.
This leaves non-union contractors out in the cold. They can bid, but if their bid is accepted they must, in effect, become unionized. The agreement says the council becomes the bargaining agent for all craft employees on the project and union hiring halls have the exclusive right to manage the hiring of all union and non-union workers. The plan includes a no-strike clause lasting 10 years.
Non-union contractors must treat their own workers as if they were unionized, including using the same pay scale as others on the project, even if that is higher than what they normally pay. That inevitably raises the price of bids on the project - at taxpayer expense.
A group of non-union contractors sued, saying the master agreement violated federal law allowing free collective bargaining. In 1991, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the non-union contractors, saying that the Massachusetts agency's master agreement through Kaiser was pre-empted by the National Labor Relations Act.
But the Supreme Court reversed that decision, declaring that since private property owners can make the same kind of management deals that Kaiser worked out, the Massachusetts agency could do the same. The high court said that the federal law did not apply since the state agency wasn't a state agency in this instance, but rather a property owner.
Upon such convoluted logic, the rights of non-union contractors were limited and the costs of large public projects undoubtedly increased. This is justice?