Original article by Indianapolis Business Journal-Editorial

Bid process should be open to all.

Adjacent to the proposed $93 million Conrad hotel at Washington and Illinois streets is the five year old Emmis Communications Corp. HQ, built on time and on budget by a variety of contractors, union and nonunion.

Large projects around the city undertaken by Eli Lilly and Co., Marsh Supermarkets Inc., and other well known private sector concerns, are built the same way: Bids are solicited, then accepted or rejected on their merits.

These giant private-sector consumers of commercial construction services, all accountable to their shareholders, demand in on-time, on-budget, quality product and get it employing a variety of contractors.

The Conrad hotel, however, like Conseco Fieldhouse, the NCAA headquarters and other large projects that involve government participation, will be built exclusively with union labor.

The city's $24 million investment in the Conrad means the project is being bid subject to a project labor agreement. The PLA requires that bidders operate according to trade unions' contracts, effectively squeezing non-union, or open-shop, contractors out of the process. The same rules apply for the $103 million central library expansion and are all but sure to be imposed for the $974 million upgrade of the Indianapolis International Airport, a big prize open-shop contractors want an opportunity to bid on.

Government officials, along with private-sector developers who might owe the financial viability of a particular project to governments investment, when asked why the open-shop contractors must be excluded, trot out the same tired explanation: Only union contractors can be trusted to build a quality project on time and on budget.

But that doesn't ring true to the thousands of construction industry employees, the majority of whom work for open-shop contractors and who are accustomed to working on big, high profile projects. And it shouldn't wash with taxpayers, whose money is being spent on construction projects that aren't bid in an open process.

House bill 1383, introduced in this year's short session of the general assembly by Rep. Eric Gutwein, RRensselar, would prohibit public works projects from requiring that bidders comply with labor agreements.

Gutwein's bill has merit, but its been assigned to the House Committee on labor and employment, where it's not expected to get a hearing and.

Project labor agreements are too important to organized labor, and by extension to the political candidates who rely on organized labor for money and votes, for Gutwein's bill to be considered.

Associated Builders and Cntractors Inc., a trade group representing open-shop contractors, has tried and failed in the courts to challenge the legality of PLAs.

As long as politicians sweep this under the rug, any project involving gov't funds will unfairly exclude the participation of open-shop contractors and their employees.

Those contractors and the public deserve a thorough, believable account of why this discriminatory practice is allowed to continue.