RESEARCH
Project Labor Agreements (PLA's) and Community Workforce Agreements (CWA's) have emerged as effective tools for achieving "on time, on budget" project results, while also establishing strong job quality standards, as well as a structured path to recruit, train, and hire low-income and other disadvantaged workers onto those projects.
DOWNLOAD RESEARCH ON PLA's
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A new study finds extending MD’s Prevailing Wage to underground utility work done by large, investor-owned utility companies would benefit MD’s economy, provide for a safer and more reliable gas/electric infrastructure, and improve the lives of MD working families.
As the large public utilities are engaged in unprecedented efforts to modernize and ensure the integrity of MD’s energy grid, ensuring the safety and reliability of the state’s public utility infrastructure at a very low cost has never been greater. Prevailing Wage is how MD can get there.
The District of Columbia can use its economic development efforts to stem the tide of the city’s rising income inequality, but it is failing to do so. Instead, the District’s economic development efforts—including the enormous Wharf project—often support creation of low-wage jobs with minimal benefits, a lost opportunity to reduce inequities. By not including requirements to create high-quality jobs, the District encourages developers to compete for projects and profits by aggressively cutting labor costs—at the expense of workers’ ability to live in the District and support their families.
Employers in an increasing number of industries misclassify their employees as independent contractors, an attempt to deny their workers the protection of workplace laws, and robbing unemployment insurance and workers compensation funds of billions of much-needed dollars and reducing federal, state, and local tax withholding and revenues while "saving" as much as 30% of payroll and related taxes otherwise paid for by the employer. Misclassification hurts law-abiding employers who play by the rules, as they are routinely underbid by these low-road contractors.
Over the past twenty years, the District has seen dramatic economic and population growth, including a development boom that has transformed the city's skyline, remade neighborhoods, and changed the city's employment landscape. These changes have led to prosperity for some, but that prosperity has not been shared with DC's low-wage workers. District leaders should seize on the growth as an opportunity to encourage "high-road development", pairing development with high-quality jobs in ways that will support workers, residents, and high-quality development projects.