ABC/AIA Cost Panel to Take to the Road

Group to Present to IFMA at Convention Center 3/21

     A joint committee made up of ABC and AIA members will present Strategies for Dealing with Escalating Construction Costs, as part of the International Facilities Management Association’s National Facilities Management and Technology Conference/Exposition. This same group presented last November, during a joint meeting between ABC and AIA. “This is part of the vision Eric Regelin charted a few years ago when we wanted to strategically reach out to the user community,” said Mike Henderson, president of ABC.  During that time ABC/AIA Value Engineering Task Force presented to several user groups, including IFMA; the Construction Owners Association of America and the Association of School Business Officials.

Employee ‘Free Choice’ Passes in House

“So, how worried should employers be?”

     Legislation that would allow unions to coerce and intimidate workers into joining a union, euphemistically named, the Employee Free  Choice Act, passed in the U.S. House of Representatives 241-185, and now moves onto the Senate, where it faces an uncertain future. The bill seeks to remove the time-honored tradition of “secret ballot elections” where workers can vote free from the pressure tactics of union organizers. The new legislation would dramatically change the tenor of union elections and come down simply to organizers collecting union authorization cards from a majority of workers.  In the past, a worker could succumb, for example, to intimidation tactics and sign a card, thus forcing an election. But during the election, that same worker could change their vote in complete anonymity and judging by the relative few elections won by unions over the past 30 years, that is precisely what has happened. President Bush has already promised to veto the legislation, should it pass in the Senate. And the House 241 votes fall short of the two-thirds needed to override the veto. So don’t expect to see this legislation anytime soon. However, the sheer boldness of the legislation does not portend well for the rights of nonunion workers. Although organized labor continues to lose market share year after year, with few expectations, they maintain their grip on the Democratic Party.

ABC Welcomes the Following New Members: