Governor Ferguson Issues Executive Order on PLAs

Dear AGC of Washington members:

As you may have seen in the news, Governor Ferguson has issued an executive order mandating the use of Project Labor Agreement’s on state-funded projects over $35 million. This will impact WSDOT and DES projects. You can see the executive order here.

Hearing that the Governor was contemplating this action, AGC leaders and staff met with the Governor’s policy advisors and expressed strongly our long-held opposition to government-mandated or government-negotiated PLAs, including our concern about the exclusion of much of the construction industry; cost impacts; negative impacts on DBE firms and more.

While we were grateful that Governor’s staff reached out for our input, we are disappointed as we believed there was still more important discussion to be had and were led to believe more discussion was indeed forthcoming before the executive order was issued. Especially disappointing is the fact that we encouraged the Governor’s office to meet with the All of Us Alliance to hear about real life, detrimental impacts of a PLA on small. and minority businesses. That did, too, not happen before the executive order was released.

We provided several suggestions about ways to mitigate the impacts of a PLA mandate, such as limiting it to mega projects and providing carveouts for DBEs/SBEs. Most of our suggestions were not included in the executive order. However, it does include a provision that seems to allow contractors to negotiate the PLA:  Require that prime contractors shall be responsible for negotiating PLAs with appropriate labor organizations, except that the state agency may determine, after consultation with the Office of the Governor, that the state agency will negotiate such PLAs if doing so is in the best interests of the State.  How effectively this plays out in actual practice remains to be seen.

This is a very concerning situation, and we understand that there are substantial impacts to both our union members as well as our open shop members. As such, we are reviewing all our available options to address this issue, and we will keep you informed. Feel free to reach out to me with your comments.

- David D'Hondt
Executive Vice President