Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge project was a local hiring disaster

$480 million bridge project resulted in a single new job in Ward 8.

“The Project Labor Agreement is a new requirement for DDOT construction projects that created DC hiring challenges.”

– D.C. Department of Transportation

Several D.C. Councilmembers pointed to the $480 million Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge project as a success story in their push to mandate Project Labor Agreements (“PLAs”) on District infrastructure.  But newly obtained data reveal a far different story.  A report issued by the District’s Department Transportation (“DDOT”) show that the project was a local hiring disaster.

Click on image to download the report

The DDOT report was published in September 2022 and transmitted to the Federal Highway Administration in June 2023. It remains the only report issued for the project. It shows that for the six quarters between Q1 2021 and Q2 2022, only 22 of the 216 “new hires” – barely 10% - were residents of the District of Columbia.  As a federal highway project, the Douglas Memorial Bridge project was not subject to District’s First Source Law, which requires 51% of all new hires to be D.C. residents. (D.C. Official Code 2-219 et seq.) Nonetheless, an equivalent requirement was incorporated in Sec. 3 of the PLA. To the surprise of no one who understands how PLAs work, the project failed miserably in meeting this local hiring requirement.

Perhaps most insulting of all is the fact that only 1 new hire on the $480 million project, built entirely in Ward 8, was from Ward 8!  Further, only 5 of the of 19 apprentices that worked on the project (an underwhelming number) were D.C. residents.  And only 20% of ALL workers that worked on the bridge were D.C. residents. 

In its report, DDOT placed the blame for the across-the-board failure at hiring D.C. residents squarely on the PLA.  This is neither surprising or uncommon. PLAs outsource control over who gets to work on public projects (and who doesn’t) to construction unions.  Union “hiring halls” prioritize their existing members, who overwhelmingly live outside the District. (Note:  According the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 89% percent of D.C. residents working in construction have chosen not to join a union.)

The District’s Department of Transportation singled out the PLA as the top barrier to employing District residents on its $480 million bridge project.

From the DDOT Report.

So there you have it. The District Government, in its own words, confirms that PLAs benefit out-of-town workers.