US Court finds against PLA requirements on 12 federal construction projects

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In a decision filed by the court on 21 January, Judge Ryan T. Holte found in favour of contractors who filed the protests against individual PLA mandates on twelve major federal construction contracts.

The court heard protests from US contractor Hensel Phelps regarding PLA requirements at the construction of an engineering test facility at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, the Patrick Space Force Base in Florida and modernisation work on the Bridge of the Americas US border crossing with Mexico in El Paso, Texas.

It also heard similar protests from MVL regarding the US Army Corps of Engineers Consolidated Rigging Facility at Joint Base Lewis McChord in Washington; Harper Construction Company regarding a maintenance and fuel cell hangar at March Air Force Reserve Base in California; Environmental Chemical Corporation regarding a Signal School at Fort Eisenhower in Georgia; and a protest from JCCBG2 regarding the construction of a Department of Agriculture Research Service Lab in Alabama.

The court said the three federal agencies involed (USACE, Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command and General Services Administration) should be given time to reassess their PLA decision on an individual basis.

The companies filing the bid protests were all members of Associated Builders and Contractors.

“ABC and its federal contractor members are ecstatic that the judicial system has delivered justice for American taxpayers and the 90% of the US construction industry workforce that is nonunion,” said ABC Vice President of Regulatory, Labor and State Affairs Ben Brubeck. “ABC members were harmed by former President Biden’s costly executive overreach, which violates federal laws and rewards special interests at the expense of fair and open competition.”

“As a result of this decision, ABC federal contractors should continue to file bid protests against individual federal agency PLA mandates on a case-by-case basis and expect similar outcomes,” said Brubeck. “This is the best solution to defeat the Biden rule on federal contracts until a court issues an injunction against the rule or the Trump administration rescinds it via executive action.”

PLAs – pre-hire collective bargaining agreements that establish terms and conditions for a specific federal construction project - have been used in the USA since the 1930s to control, among other details specific to each case, the wages paid to workers, benefits, and timelines for the project. They were used on projects including the Hoover Dam in Nevada. Projects mandated by a PLA typically necessitate the use of unionised firms, contractors, and workers, which has concerned non-union companies.

The agreements are largely favoured by Democrats and opposed by Republicans. In 2023, Joe Biden signed an executive order making PLAs mandatory for federal projects costing more than US$35 million.