Two years later, the Trump White House followed in February 2025 by calling for an end to PLAs on Department of Defense projects, ordering its contracting officers to halt the use of PLAs on “large-scale construction projects.” However, months into the new term, the White House reversed its position and let stand the Biden-era rules.

“For clarity, the Trump administration supports the use of PLAs when those agreements are practicable and cost effective, and blanket deviations prohibiting the use of PLAs are precluded,” wrote Russell T. Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget. 

All of this points to the fact that PLAs have both supporters and critics—particularly from local business owners and private developers who complain they are forced as project owners to incur higher labor costs that make some projects financially unfeasible. The trades have mainly worked on PLAs in the public arena because their efforts have been often thwarted on many residential development projects in Westchester’s major cities, blaming weak regulations governing qualifications for public incentives.

In March 2025, William “Bill” Banfield, then assistant executive secretary-treasurer of the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters, met head-on those criticisms of PLAs in an op-ed published in Crain’s New York Business.

Mr. Banfield wrote: “Unions are a convenient scapegoat for construction developers looking to assign blame for price increases, but a deep dive into the evidence tells a different story. The main reason construction costs have increased is because the cost of materials, such as lumber and steel, continues to increase. The specter of new tariffs on countries such as Canada, where American contractors source raw materials, also complicates near-term planning. Insurance costs are also rising, in part because of the higher rates of accidents at under-trained, non-union job sites.”

He then charged that those who oppose PLAs and other union-backed protections do so “because their business model relies on using lower cost, untrained workers—many from out-of-state. Non-union contractors frequently misclassify their employees as independent contractors, enabling them to underpay workers and avoid providing benefits. They underbid local contractors by cutting corners and then they take their profits and move on. This hurts workers, but it also hurts other contractors—including honest non-union contractors—who genuinely play by the rules….”

PLAs Still in Use on Federal Projects

And while the Trump Administration initial push-back on the Biden Administration order may be reversed, it’s resistance to PLAs will likely reappear. In May 2025, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras issued a preliminary injunction, finding that the exceptions “effectively nullified” the requirements of Biden’s executive order, which required exceptions to be considered on a case-by-case basis and prospective in nature.

In a memo last month, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought seemed to walk back the PLA restricting memos.

“Over the last several months, some agencies have issued overly broad Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) deviations related to project labor agreements and the use of those agreements,” Mr. Vought wrote. “The deviations have signaled an inconsistent administration position relating to the use of PLAs.”

He further noted that the FAR already allows for exemptions from the PLA requirement if market research indicates its inclusion would “substantially reduce” the number of potential bids on a project. And he amended OMB’s memorandum governing PLAs to clarify that if two or fewer are expected, or if the bidders indicate their price would increase by more than 10% due to the PLA requirement, an exception would be warranted.

“Agencies should use PLAs when practicable and cost-effective,” he wrote. “Agencies should rescind any deviations related to PLAs that were issued prior to the date of this guidance. Independent agency interpretation for PLA use should no longer occur.”

Streamlining Management-Labor Issues

PLAs took hold in the Hudson Valley some 30 years ago with its first use on the The Westchester shopping mall in Downtown White Plains. Spearheaded by late-union leader Edward Doyle, the first agreement was negotiated in the early 1990s by the Building & Construction Trades Council of Westchester & Putnam Counties with contractor Whiting-Turner and the developer The O’Connor Group on the $250-million retail project, which was successfully completed in 1995. Hundreds more have followed since then on major public and private infrastructure and development projects, the largest being the construction of the $3.98-billion Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, which first opened to traffic in 2018.

In a December 1993 article in The New York Times on the construction of The Westchester shopping mall, Mr. Doyle and representatives of the developer discussed the county’s first PLA.

At that time, Paul F. Kastner, a senior vice president of marketing for the O’Connor Group, stated: “Although there may have been a perception that the unions in Westchester County were difficult, we were most pleased to discover just the opposite, which is perhaps due to the current economic climate and drought of construction activity in the area.”

“It’s the answer to labor and management issues,” Mr. Doyle said at the time. “It’s the wave of the future.” He explained that no-strike clauses were important to the banks that finance new building projects, and in the case of The Westchester, that concession was the key element in gaining the all-union contract agreement during a recession, The Times reported.

Mr. Doyle, who recently passed away on July 20 at age 86, will long be remembered as the chief advocate of the PLA and as a seer of its pathway to help secure a role for the building trades, in a world fraught with challenges, through consensus and labor harmony.