Supervisor cartoon distributed at meeting

A shooting match has broken out between the Master Builders of Iowa and the Linn County Supervisors over project labor agreements.

The supervisors are considering adopting a project labor agreement for county projects, which would require contractors to uphold certain standards in order to bid for contracts.

Master Builders of Iowa, a Des Moines-based construction association, published a column in its quarterly trade publication calling the supervisors' consideration of a project labor agreement “a back room political deal with building trade unions.”

At the bottom of the column is a cartoon depicting five wild-eyed Linn County supervisors looking over blueprints at a table and thinking inane thoughts in bubbles, while union toughs in the background guard the door to the room. The caption at the bottom reads: “Wow…we get to run a construction company.”

Supervisor Brent Oleson, a Republican who's been pushing for the supervisors to look at a project labor agreement, distributed the article at the supervisors meeting Wednesday.

"They're an extremist special interest group," Oleson said of Master Builders. "This is the kind of stuff that goes on in Des Moines all the time. It's not working for them here, and I think they're completely unhinged about it."

Iowa law requires government entities to award contracts to the lowest responsible bidder. In early flood-recovery work, that bidder has often been a non-union contractor from outside Linn County.

In order to favor local contractors and impose wage and training requirements, the supervisors will consider adopting a project labor agreement. The agreements vary, but in some cases they stipulate hiring a certain percentage of workers from local trade unions. In other cases, they require contractors to meet standards such as paying a prevailing local wage or meeting specific training standards.

Such an agreement, in any form, would be an inappropriate interference by government in the operation of a company, said Scott Norvell, president/CEO of Master Builders of Iowa and the author of the column that got Brent Oleson's goat.

“Clearly the passage of such an absurd requirement results in putting their personal politics ahead of project and taxpayer interest to curry labor's favor,” Norvell wrote.

Though the supervisors have not begun to publicly discuss specifics of a project labor agreement, Norvell argues a labor agreement would set up artificial barriers in Iowa, make projects more expensive, limit contractor creativity and raise difficult questions like what constitutes a local contractor.

Oleson argues a project labor agreement may be one practical way for supervisors to give local contractors an advantage in bidding. Without that, the “buy local” slogan is hollow, he said.

"We're not just going to mouth it," he said.