The Des Moines Construction Council sees a growing need for signatory contractors, regardless of their trade, to have an outlet to share information and learn more about the challenges of managing not only collective bargaining agreements, but also the many aspects that union contractors face. Though the trades are different, there is a commonality amongst signatory contractors that DMCC hopes to serve.
A Special Welcome to the Newest DMCC Members!
Baker Interiors
Rowe and Baker Painting
Mechanical Contractors Association of Iowa
Elder Corporation
Corn States Fabricators
MMC Contractors
Northwest Steel Erection
Commonwealth Electric Company
CI3 Control Installations
Des Moines Construction Council Quarterly Meeting Scheduled in June
The next DMCC Spring Quarterly meeting has been scheduled for June 17, from 3:00-5:00PM. The meeting will be held at the Holiday Inn Downtown Mercy Area – 1050 6th Avenue, Des Moines. DMCC members and all signatory contractors in Central Iowa are invited to attend. Don’t miss an opportunity to mix and mingle with your colleagues at this forum, and hear about the latest issues central Iowa contractors are facing. 

Webinar Scheduled on Unfunded Liabilities for
DMCC Members
One of the biggest risks for any union contractor relates to unfunded liabilities arising from participation in a multi-employer pension plan. This risk can be devastating and confusing for you and your business. This latest DMCC webinar will cover the scope of this risk and the issues of concern to avoid triggering such liability. Leon Shearer will present this webinar and help you navigate the sometimes treacherous waters of unfunded liabilities. 

The webinar will be held on July 21st at 10:00AM and is open to all DMCC members in good standing. However, you MUST RSVP in order to receive the link to the webinar.
Producer Price Index Data for April Shows Wide Variety of Materials with Double-Digit Price Increases, While Competition for Projects Keeps Non-residential Construction Firms from Passing on Added Costs

The cost of goods and services used in construction accelerated further in April as more items logged double-digit increases over the past year, according to an analysis by the Associated General Contractors of America of government data released today. Meanwhile, nonresidential contractors struggled with delays in receiving materials and intensifying competition that limited their ability to pass on higher costs. Association officials urged the Biden administration to quickly roll back tariffs and quotas on imported construction materials that are adding to costs and availability problems.

“Today’s producer price index report—bad though it is—actually understates the severity of the problems contractors are experiencing,” said Ken Simonson, the association’s chief economist. “Many items have posted even steeper price increases since the data for this report were collected in mid-April, while lead times for producing goods and delivery times to distributors and worksites have grown ever longer and less certain.”

Prices for materials used in construction jumped 19.7 percent from April 2020 to last month. That was by far the largest increase in the 35-year history of the series, Simonson said. A series that includes services as well as goods purchased by contractors increased nearly as much, 19.1 percent. Meanwhile, the producer price index for new nonresidential construction—a measure of what contractors say they would charge to erect five types of nonresidential buildings—rose only 2.3 percent over the past 12 months, as competition for a shrinking pool of new projects forced contractors to absorb most of the increases.

Items with especially steep price increases over the past year ranged from lumber to metals to plastics. The producer price index for lumber and plywood soared 85.7 percent from April 2020 to last month. The index for steel mill products climbed 67 percent, while the index for copper and brass mill shapes rose 49 percent and the index for aluminum mill shapes increased 20.5 percent. The index for plastic construction products rose 14.2 percent amid growing scarcity of items such as PVC pipe, vinyl siding and moisture barriers, and resins used in paints and adhesives. The index for gypsum products such as wallboard climbed 12.1 percent.

Association officials said some of the supply chain problems have resulted from the pandemic or one-time events like the freeze in Texas last February that damaged plants producing inputs for construction plastics. But they added that federal policies, particularly tariffs and quotas on key building materials like lumber, steel, and aluminum have exacerbated the price spikes, supply shortages, and delivery delays. They urged the administration to end those import obstacles and explore ways to help uncork supply-chain bottlenecks.

“The Biden administration must address these unprecedented lumber and steel costs and broader supply-chain woes or risk undermining the economic recovery,” said Stephen E. Sandherr, the association’s chief executive officer. “Without tariff relief and other measures, vital construction projects will fall behind schedule or be canceled.”

  • View producer price index data.
  • View chart of gap between input costs and bid prices.
  • View AGC’s Construction Inflation Alert.
U.S. Chamber: Union Free Doesn't Mean Worry-Free: Why Every Business Should Care About the PRO Act
For the last couple of years, this blog has written numerous times about the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which is the wish list of onerous policies that labor unions and their allies hope to pass. Their objective is to hamstring employers and facilitate union organizing efforts in the hope that it will help labor unions reverse a 65-year downward membership trend. Some employers may be tempted to think that if they do not have a union or don’t consider themselves a likely target for organizing, the PRO Act won’t impact them. Suffice it to say, nothing could be farther from the truth. 

While this legislation may seem obscure—or even not relevant—to some businesses, there are specific provisions that would impact all employers, regardless of whether they ever become the target of a union organizing campaign. For one thing, the PRO Act would make it an unfair labor practice to include mandatory arbitration clauses in employment agreements, something many employers do to avoid unnecessarily expensive litigation in employment disputes. These clauses are widely used, and each agreement with an individual employee could form the basis of a separate Unfair Labor Practice charge (ULP).

Under the PRO Act, ULPs would include significant penalties of up to $100,000 per violation. And these penalties can be levied personally on individual company officers or directors. These penalties would apply even if you are never the target of a union campaign. Making matters worse, anyone can file a ULP—it doesn’t have to be an employee. Unions, and just about anyone else, could have a field day filing charges against any employer using arbitration clauses and watching those companies and their officers and directors get hit with penalty after penalty.

Likewise, the PRO Act requires employers to allow employees to utilize an employer’s technology “including computers, laptops, tablets, internet access, email, cellular telephones, or other company equipment” for engaging in so-called “concerted activity.” This would mean workers could use your systems to talk to one another about wages, benefits and working conditions, and if you tried to limit that activity and maintain control over your technology, a ULP could follow—again with massive penalties—even if the business was never the target of an organizing campaign.

Employers who engage the services of independent contractors might think the PRO Act is of little relevance to them, but they too would be mistaken. That’s because the PRO Act adopts California’s restrictive “ABC” test for determining employment, which would make many of those independent contractors employees with respect to labor law. Thus, many independent contractors would suddenly be covered by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and able to file ULPs related to concerted activity and arbitration clauses.

Finally, because of the PRO Act’s language authorizing secondary activity, unions would have incentives to drag businesses that are not the actual target of an organizing effort into a campaign against their actual target. Let’s say you are provide food supplies to a hospital that unions wish to organize. The union may figure that the hospital can’t function without food deliveries, so they decide to picket at your company to pressure you to stop doing business with the hospital. In this way, the hospital might be forced to the bargaining table. But your company, which was not the unions actual target, is simply collateral damage.

To put things simply, the PRO Act would affect practically every employer in the country, and the business community must focus its efforts to make sure lawmakers know how bad this bill is. The opening line to The WHO song Why Should I Care asks, “Was there something more I could have done?” All employers should vocally oppose this bill and ensure that the answer to that question is “no.”