Welcome to the all new Grassroots Action Center. Here you can keep updated on issues concerning the Merit Shop in California, contact your elected officials, and make your voice heard in an easy and quick format. It's quick, it's easy, it's effective. Go to the Grassroots Action Center.
ABC Launches New PLA Information Website
For the latest news on PLAs, legislation and what's going on around the country, visit
The Truth About Project Labor Agreements.
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PLAs are structured to make a project essentially a union-only job. Although PLAs are replete with provisions that mandate the union way of doing business, there are four main provisions of PLAs that are particularly objectionable to ABC:
- PLAs require non-union companies to pay their workers’ health and welfare benefits to union trust funds, even though these companies have their own benefit plans. Companies thus have to pay benefits twice: once to the union and once to the company plan. Workers never see any of their benefits sent to the unions unless they decide to leave their non-union employer and remain with the union until vested.
- PLAs require Merit Shop companies to obtain their workers from union hiring halls. This means that a Merit Shop company has to send its workers to the union hiring hall and hope that the union sends the same workers back.
- PLAs require Merit Shop companies to obtain apprentices exclusively from union apprenticeship programs. Participants in state-approved Merit Shop apprenticeship programs cannot work on a job covered by a PLA. This means that young people enrolled in Merit Shop apprenticeship programs can find themselves excluded from work in their hometowns!
- Non-union workers must pay union dues and fees or join a union.
A list has been compiled of all PLA activity in the state from 1984 through the present. To view this list, click here. For specific information on local PLA's, please contact Government Affairs Director, Jackie Nutting.
ABC National is the main point of contact for federal affairs, and chapters are the primary contact with state and local affairs. Therefore, we are a team that works collaboratively to assist ABC membership and our industry.
California Department of Industrial Relations
Occupational Safety
Apprenticeship Standards
Statistics and Research (including prevailing wages)