State Sen. John DiSanto (R-Dauphin/Perry) supports the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s (PennDOT) decision to drop its appeal of a January Commonwealth Court ruling.
The ruling had rejected PennDOT’s planned Project Labor Agreement (PLA) for the reconstruction of Markley Street in Norristown.
The court ruled PennDOT’s rationale for the PLA was unjustified and that the department’s requirement that contractors must hire union laborers violated the Pennsylvania Constitution’s competitive bidding requirement.
Under the bidding requirement, nonunion contractors do not receive a guarantee from a union that the contractor’s existing workforce will be assigned to a project. Nonunion contractors also cannot force their own employees join a union.
PLAs place undue burdens on nonunion contractors, prohibiting them from using its own workforce, DiSanto said.
“PennDOT argued a PLA was essential to completing the construction in a timely manner, despite the fact that the initial phase of the project was completed a year ahead of schedule and under budget without a PLA,” DiSanto said. “In the administration’s move to favor politically powerful union leaders at the expense of nonunion contractors, PennDOT wasted nearly two years’ time that could have been spent completing the actual infrastructure project.”
DiSanto said he hoped this was PennDOT’s first and final attempt at a PLA for roadway construction.