期刊名称：Case Studies in Business, Industry and Government Statistics
印刷版ISSN：2152-372X
出版年度：2007
卷号：1
期号：1
页码：71-79
出版社：Bentley University
摘要：A Project Labor Agreement (PLA) is a form of “pre-hire” collective bargaining agreement between building trades un-ions and the construction clients that typically requires any firm that bids on a project hire workers through union halls and follow union rules on pensions, work conditions and dispute resolution. In return, unions agree not to strike for the duration of the project. Opponents argue that PLAs raise construction costs; proponents dispute this and say that labor peace ensures that PLA projects are finished on time. We measure the cost effect of PLAs using data on construction costs for 126 schools in Massachusetts between 1995 and 2003; our regression results show that PLAs raise the cost of school building by between $12 and $20 per square foot, or by between 9 and 15% of total costs. This is in line with anecdotal evidence on the PLA effect. However, a study by Belman et al. (2005), using fewer (70) observations but a fuller econometric specification, found no statistically significant PLA effect; we argue this imprecision is due to the small sample. We suspect that in this case the larger sample with fewer variables is more revealing than a smaller sample with more variables.
关键词：Project Labor Agreement; construction costs; Massachusetts schools
