John,
The subject of union v/s non union issues, tends to drift into hard positions taken by some posters, from my view, and years of experience, working on both sides, I can assure you, we need more factual discussion on these issues not less, the problem seems to be, most of the time they go off the issue, into a hard position, and sides are taken.
Some of the Studies on Project Labor Agreements are skewed, they become political footballs, to rally for a position. Local agreements may depend on the area economic conditions, planned projects for the area, and the area labor conditions, the cost of these projects usually go up due to political footballing, (we need, we don't need the school) this stalls the project, and the cost of the project continues to rise, until a decision to build is made, usually by a local proposal, on election day, IMO labor has the least impact on school construction costs, the time from concept of construction, where a budget number for the project is planned, can be 3 to 6 times the cost due to stalling, by the time it is approved for construction.
This board topic is Electrical Contracting, and Estimating/Management Labor agreements, and labor activity is all a part of this topic, and should be discussed in an orderly forum.
