The Biden administration has successfully passed its signature industrial investments with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act—laws that promise to strengthen the economy for years to come, grow the middle class, and support millions of high-quality jobs for working Americans. These laws invest billions of dollars in the country’s infrastructure, from rebuilding crumbling roads, bridges, and ports; to installing chargers and building battery factories to support the electric vehicle ecosystem; to reviving America’s leadership in semiconductor manufacturing. Already, public and private investments have dedicated billions of dollars in new funding, and government investments and subsidies will continue over the coming years in the form of grants, loans, and tax incentives.
Now, federal agencies can help provide the public good value for these investments and deliver on the laws’ commitments to creating quality jobs accessible to Americans from all walks of life by encouraging more recipients of public funding to adopt project labor agreements (PLAs) and community workforce agreements (CWAs). Yet, PLAs and CWAs are underused across the government, and many awarding agencies, as well as officials at all levels of government, lack direct experience with these sorts of agreements.
The above excerpt was originally published in the Center for American Progress.
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