New Jerseys outrageous union giveaways are paving a road to ruin

New Jersey is slamming taxpayers with a one-two punch: forcing them to pay more for their roads — and trampling on the Constitution to do it.When Evesham Township in southern New Jersey needed some roads repaved in 2025, it put the job out for bid.Of the eight responding contractors, Earle Asphalt Co.’s bid came in lowest, at $1,463,513.That’s where the story should have ended: Earle gets the job, taxpayers get their roads fixed at the best price, everyone goes home happy.It’s not what happened.Seven days after bids closed, the Evesham Township Council passed a resolution mandating that all public works contracts include a project labor agreement.That’s a pre-hire collective bargaining arrangement requiring contractors to hire through union halls, and to recognize unions as their workers’ exclusive bargaining representative.Earle, which has operated as a non-union “open shop” since its founding in 1968, couldn’t agree to those terms without betraying the principles that make it one of New Jersey’s most respected construction companies.So the township threw out all the bids and started over.When the dust settled, every offer came in higher than Earle’s original price.The lowest was $1,617,411 — more than $153,000 above Earle’s bid.Evesham taxpayers are now on the hook for that amount to get the exact same roads repaved by a different company willing to abide by the unionization requirement.The roads don’t know the difference.The taxpayers’ wallets do.It’s a small-scale preview of what’s happening all across New Jersey, as project labor agreements spread from large state projects down to routine local work.In January, outgoing Gov.

Phil Murphy signed legislation eliminating the cost-threshold rules that once limited PLAs to major endeavors, allowing municipalities to slap union mandates on virtually any public works contract.The result is predictable: fewer bidders, less competition, higher prices.The company has now taken the state...