#How New York’s ‘project labor agreements’ feed union corruption

The recent indictment of James Cahill, president of the New York State Building and Construction Trades Council, and 11 others on corruption and bribery charges was a sad moment for organized labor. Honest, hardworking union members deserve better.

Cahill and his associates deny the charges, and they deserve their day in court. Still, the allegations, if true, shed a cold light on Empire State collective-bargaining structures that make it all too easy for a few union bosses to enrich themselves at the expense of workers, taxpayers and the common good.

Federal prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York accuse Cahill of using his influence to interfere with labor-management relations in the construction industry in exchange for some $100,000 in bribes. Cahill allegedly advised a non-union employer not to sign up with a union and not to pursue bids that would have resulted in work for union members.

The American labor movement was founded to facilitate collective bargaining to improve workers’ economic status and working conditions. But the sheer power wielded by some union bigs too often frustrates that noble aim.

One of the ways that traditional building-trades-union bosses grab so much authority is through state- and city-granted Project Labor Agreements. A PLA, you might recall, was a major cause of soaring costs in the $2.7 billion-per-mile Second Avenue Subway.

When a PLA is in place, it grants a union leader the power to call all the shots and determine which locals get total and complete control of multibillion-dollar public and private construction projects. Those in charge decide what it’s going to cost in labor to get the job done. They become the ultimate power brokers, controlling numerous jobs and commanding the loyalty of countless beneficiaries down the line.

Cut out of these schemes are smaller construction unions and their members, who want to play by the rules and have their work priced honestly based on the output of our labor. Unions like mine have long been forced to compete on an uneven playing field, and if these allegations are true, now we know how and why.

This summer, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new exclusive municipal-construction labor agreement with the New York Buildings Construction Trade Council. It grants certain executives and unions complete monopolistic control over any projects that might receive tax abatements, public financing or other subsidies equaling 30 percent or more of the cost of construction.

Cahill has won similar concessions from the state of New York, where exclusive PLAs are the norm, used for the $4 billion rebuilding of the Tappan Zee Bridge (now the Mario Cuomo Bridge), the $1 billion Tesla Giga Factory and the Buffalo Billion project to revive the upstate economy.

Yet even while under the dark cloud of a federal indictment, the Building Trades still hold sway over this way of doing business in New York.

This power is not granted to this group through the normal legislative process nor debated on the floor of the Senate or Assembly or in our public square.

Instead, in a convoluted section of the $177 billion state budget, there is a requirement that on certain projects, there either be a prevailing wage or a PLA — to the exclusion of many other unions and others not in the Building Trades. It’s a sweet deal for the monopoly.

We have long been taught that monopolies are harmful and drive up the cost of business while potentially sidelining the best and brightest workers. It’s time we acknowledge that such excessive powers granted by the government are abhorrent, leading directly to corruption.

In a democracy, is it really government’s role to pick winners and losers among the labor force, as if by royal decree? President Theodore Roosevelt, the New York-bred trustbuster, would be turning over in his grave, if he witnessed these machinations. PLAs aren’t in the best interest of taxpayers — and it’s time to pull the plug on them.

Kevin Barry is director of the construction division of the United Service Workers Union based in Briarwood, Queens.