If politicians really want to solve California's current energy crisis, they must undo the artificial shortage created by unions and project labor agreements.
More than 10 years ago, many nonunion and some union contractors began complaining about a new tactic that forced power producers to use only union contractors. At that time, Thomas R. Adams, an attorney in San Mateo, Calif., and Thomas J. Hunter, business manager of District Council 51 of the plumbers' and pipefitters' union, pioneered the use of environmental protests against projects as a way to bargain for union-only project labor agreements on them. Previously, PLAs had been used to lower the costs of union contractors by eliminating featherbedding and by reducing impacts from union jurisdictional disputes.