To the Editor:
The Hartford Business Journal’s recent article “CT construction contracts leaving out minorities” (Oct. 22 edition) brings to light the fact that current conditions in state minority contracting have weakened. Despite the downturn, there are other hiring vehicles being used today to help minority contractors more directly. By entering into a Project Labor Agreement, building owners, municipalities, and state agencies strengthen the hiring requirements and contractual obligations of construction managers, general contractors, and prime contractors.
Without a PLA in place, a minority contractor may have a large contract and only perform a small part of that contract while still earning credit as a minority classified project. It is common practice that many projects are subcontracted to other contractors who do not meet any of the designated minority categories.
As a solution, the HBJ article suggests decreasing the size of the contracts and subcontracts to allow greater participation. Project Labor Agreements can and have done just that. PLAs can be negotiated so that they break up the project into smaller pieces, which allows companies with less bonding capacity to competitively bid on portions of the project. This results in an added level of transparency by allowing public contracts to be split into multiple smaller contracts, rather than only publicly bidding large prime contracts.
PLAs can also be negotiated to include specific hiring goals for each minority designation. These agreements have built in monitoring of minority hiring and contracting requirements, which will alleviate the burden of state enforcement agencies, at no additional cost to the contract.
Project Labor Agreements have been very successful in setting conditions that are significantly more stringent than what is currently required by law and in giving more opportunities to minority contractors and workers, whether they are union affiliates or non-union.
Jeremy Zeedyk Sheet Metal Workers’ Local Union 40
