Study Shows Union Contractors Deliver Projects Faster and Cheaper

The conventional wisdom says union contractors cost taxpayers more on public projects. A peer-reviewed study of 128 Sacramento County public works projects completed between 2018 and 2022 found the opposite: union contractors were associated with 5 to 6 percent lower costs and 14 to 22 percent faster completion times than non-union contractors. On today's trades day episode of America's Work Force Union Podcast, NorCal CIC Policy and Research Analyst Dr. Larissa Petrucci walks through how the study was built using California's publicly available certified payroll data and hundreds of public records requests, why the statistical methodology ensures the findings are genuinely about union contractor status rather than other variables and what building trades councils in other states can do right now to push for the data transparency that made this research possible. Visit norcalcic.org for more.