US Infrastructure Diversity Plan Draws Fire From Contractors, Minority Groups
Date Posted: March 14, 2022
Posted In: Discussion,
From ConstructionDive: Two cabinet-level heads are better than one at funneling a higher percentage of lucrative infrastructure jobs to women and minority contractors.
That’s the concept behind a memo of understanding between Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to award more of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) to underrepresented workers.
But the framework drew fire from a powerful construction trade group for emphasizing project labor agreements. And it elicited skepticism from a minority contractors’ organization for lacking tracking and enforcement details.
Dive Insight:
The objective of the memo is to create good-paying jobs, with the choice to join a union, for workers in traditionally underserved communities, according to a joint statement from DOL and DOT released this week. But it also said it would favor union partnerships and project labor agreements in grant decisions.
PLAs are similar to collective bargaining agreements but apply to a single project and are agreed upon by all parties: general contractors, subcontractors and labor groups. Last month, President Joe Biden issued an executive order mandating PLAs on federal contracts of $35 million or more.
While PLAs don’t specifically cut non-union contractors out of federal projects, they’re often perceived by construction employers’ groups as doing so. For example, the Associated Builders and Contractors trade group, which has been waging a concerted campaign against PLAs since Biden took office, railed against their inclusion in the joint memo. It claimed PLAs actually promote exclusionary practices for underrepresented workers, since 87.4% of the construction workforce doesn’t belong to unions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.