In February, President Joe Biden signed an executive order with considerable ramifications for the construction industry. The order (EO 14063) requires project labor agreements on stateside federal construction contracts of $35 million or more. An article about the order, published in the National Law Review, characterizes project labor agreements as “a collective bargaining agreement between a contractor and the building trade union on a specific construction project.”
Among the provisions in EO 14063, the National Law Review notes that the agreements must:
- “Include specific terms
- “Allow all contractors and subcontractors on the project to compete for project work whether or not they are otherwise unionized
- “Contain guarantees against strikes, lockouts and similar job disruptions
- “Establish mutually binding dispute resolution methods
- “Provide other mechanisms for cooperation between labor and management
- “Fully conform to all statutes, regulations, executive orders and presidential memoranda,” which generally goes for every executive order.
The order does allow senior officials to grant exceptions to the order under specific conditions. The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council is supposed to propose regulations for the implementation of the order within 120 days of its signing.