ABC member Rebecca Meinking, executive vice president of Radec Corporation, Rochester, N.Y., April 20 testified at a field hearing titled “Regulatory Impediments to Job Creation in the Northeast,” conducted by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending.

In her testimony, Meinking began by illustrating the struggle her company has faced in creating and keeping jobs in recent years, noting that Radec has reduced its workforce by nearly 30 percent.

Meinking cited project labor agreements (PLAs) as one of the regulations that have a negative impact on her company’s ability to create jobs and employ their workers. She pointed out that PLAs require her to ignore her own employees and instead hire from a union hall, discouraging her from even considering bidding on a project containing a PLA mandate. Meinking also called for passage of H.R. 735, the Government Neutrality in Contracting Act, which would prohibit PLAs on taxpayer funded projects.

“As a small business, our employees are really part of our extended family, and we can see no reason to take away from them an opportunity to work and provide for their families in order to provide opportunities for their union counterparts,” Meinking said.

Focusing on the National Labor Relations Board, Meinking expressed concern over recent rulings including one that would allow unions the same access to work sites as charitable organizations and one that would change what constitutes a bargaining unit, in addition to requiring business owners to supply union organizers with employee names and email addresses.

Finally, Meinking criticized the enforcement-first approach that has recently been adopted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which focuses on finding worksite violations and assessing substantial fines against employers instead of working collaboratively with those employers to promote safe working conditions.

“I urge Congress to find opportunities to encourage OSHA to abandon its punitive enforcement approach and instead consider collaborative ways to partner with employers and employees to promote safe workplaces in the construction industry specifically,” Meinking said.

For more information on this hearing, visit the Committee on Government Oversight and Reform website.