A quick lesson on the ABC’s of the construction industry.

Associated Builders and Contractors, also known as ABC, is a corporate front group seeking to increase its own members’ wealth at the expense of taxpayers, communities, honest businesses and hard working men and women. A fringe organization, ABC falsely claims to be the voice of the construction industry even though in most states, less than
one-half of 1 percent of contractors join the organization.

LIUNA joined the Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) and the AFL-CIO in releasing the findings of a first-ever state-by-state comparative analysis of the Associated Builders and Contractors. The findings expose ABC’s data manipulation and an aggressive disinformation campaign designed to confuse elected officials, the public and the press into supporting policies that produce fewer jobs, lower wages, and minimal workforce training, which have had a detrimental effect on workers, their communities and the US construction industry as a whole.
The report, written by Dr. Thomas J. Kriger, analyzes ABC from a number of different perspectives, including its origins, its membership and density among contractors in the American construction industry, its finances, its formal apprenticeship and craft training programs (along with its affiliate, the National Center for Construction Education and Research, NCCER), and ABC’s more recent electronic, ideological issues advocacy.
One of the key findings of the report is that the total number of ABC’s member-contractors amounts to only 1% of the total number of licensed or registered construction contractors in the United States. And, in no state does the percentage of ABC’s member-contractors exceed 6% of the total number of licensed or registered contractors in any of the 46 states where ABC operates.