Agenda - Council Work Session - 07/28/2026

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THE IMPACT OF RESPONSIBLE BIDDER ORDINANCES ON UNION CONTRACTORS IN ILLINOIS AND INDIANA The Impact of 11 New RBOs on Market Share Outcomes The data utilized in this research was collected by the Indiana, Illinois, Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting, a nonprofit labor-management organization (III FFC, 2021). The III FFC collects project data for 14 northern Indiana counties and 25 northern Illinois counties using bid software programs such as ConstructConnect and Dodge Data & Analytics as well as through public bid lettings and public documents. All projects in their proprietary reports include the date of the bid letting, the county of the project, the awarding agency, bid information, the union (or signatory) status of each bidder, and whether the project was covered by a local responsible bidder ordinance (RBO). This study includes project bid data from January 2018 through June 2021. The 42 months represent the period of analysis. Since 2019, there have been 16 RBOs passed in Illinois and Indiana. One city —the City of Kewanee, IL —had a different RBO in effect starting in 2007. Four others, including two in Indiana and two in Illinois, did not have a project built either before or after passage of the RBO during the period of analysis. These four jurisdictions include a school district, library district, village, and forest preserve. It is not possible to ascertain the effect of adopting an RBO in these four jurisdictions because there is not a clear before -and -after picture. This leaves 11 jurisdictions with project bid data both before their RBOs were passed and after their RBOs went into effect —five in Illinois and six in Indiana. The full dataset includes 145 public projects involving the operating engineers craft, including 94 prior to passage of the local RBOs and 51 after passage. Figure 2 presents summary statistics for all the projects awarded by these 11 local government jurisdictions in Illinois and Indiana between the beginning of January 2018 and the end of June 2021. On the projects that were awarded prior to passage of the local RBOs, union contractors won 76.6 percent of the projects and the union market share was 87.1 percent. By contrast, after RBOs were enacted and applied on projects funded by these same jurisdictions, union contractors were awarded 90.2 percent of the projects and the union market share totaled 97.9 percent. Accordingly, the union win rate was 13.6 percent higher and the union market share was 10.8 percent higher on the post-RBO projects than on the pre-RBO projects. This reveals that local businesses employing union construction workers are more significantly likely to be responsible contractors with proven track records of success than nonunion firms in the region. Bid competition was essentially unchanged, with about three and half contractors submitting bids on public projects regardless of whether or not they were covered by RBOs. FIGURE 2: CHANGE IN UNION WIN SHARE AND UNION MARKET SHARE IN 11 ILLINOIS AND INDIANA JURISDICTIONS THAT HAVE PASSED RBOS SINCE 2019, WITH BEFORE -AND -AFTER DATA FROM JAN. 2018 THROUGH JUNE 2021 Column 11 Jurisdictions with Data Math Before -and -After Before After RBO RBOs RBOs Difference A Number of Projects B Number of Bids C Bids Per Project D Value of All Projects E Projects Awarded to Unions F Union Win Share G Value of Projects Awarded to Unions H Union Market Share 94 342 B _ A 3.6 $66,749,035.72 72 E+A 76.6% $58,154,683.02 G+D 87.1% 51 174 3.4 $56,246,096.58 46 90.2% $55,087,053.28 97.9 -0.2 +13.6% +10.8% Source: Authors' analysis of project bid data from the Indiana, Illinois, Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting (III FFC, 2021). For more, see Table B, Table C, and Table D in the Appendix. 4