Not a day goes by without new drama over the Washington Nationals soon-to-be stadium in Southeast — whether debates over public financing arrangements, misleading cost estimates, or rebellious land owners, a stadium rising from the industrial hinterlands along the Anacostia River by 2008 will be nothing short of a Herculean task. Once the land is secured, environmental assessments completed, and designs approved, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams and baseball’s many boosters may well see the green light on finally getting started on what has been a decades long project. Or will they?

Another pending obstacle to the construction of the stadium — whether or D.C. officials will mandate that union labor be used — could very well pit cost-conscious public officials against the labor movement, potentially forcing surprising political divisions in what is by-and-large a Democratic city. Contractors and labor activists have dug their trenches, and both are doing their best to court the city’s decision-makers.

Toward the end of November 2004, city officials stated that they would seek a labor agreement by which contractors working on the stadium would have to employ union labor and offer all workers union-won wages and benefits. These oft-employed Project Labor Agreements, also known as PLAs, are seen as either a means to protect workers health and well-being or unnecessary burdens that inevitably lead to cost overruns, depending on who you ask.