The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and the Chicago Laboratory Federation, an umbrella organization representing 300 unions in the region, were "exhausted by the construction workers, who are still quite powerful in the city," Lichtenstein said in a telephone interview. The media report that the unions involved in the current strike have closed many projects throughout Chicago, managed to use the strike in future monopolies for Big Labor, encouraging project owners and school districts to sign LPOs on current and future construction projects in exchange for unions to get back to work ("District 203, unions maintain the agreement for the central work of Naperville, 7/8/10 and "the agreement puts coal City High School back on track," 7/13/10). Violation of solidarity with trade unions representing retail employees is not the only source of disagreement in this agreement. To the chagrin of non-union contractors and their employees, AFL-CIO Building Construction Trades (BCTD) President Mark Ayers aggressively encouraged THE PLA by distributing a memo to politicians and private developers: "The goal of the project`s employment contract is to prevent interruptions, prevent delays and have peace at work," he said. The question raised by this strike is - and I do not know what answer - what impact will this strike have on the willingness of other builders to participate in a project employment contract? Wal-Mart is unlikely to freely reduce the support of qualified contractors and their qualified employees and voluntarily increase construction costs without foreign political pressure and fear of bad publicity resulting from Big Labor`s strong anti-corporate campaigns (pdf). Waste doesn`t really fit Wal-Mart`s business model. Wal-Mart`s profitability in accessing a new and lucrative urban market has likely allowed the retail giant to absorb excessive construction costs, often accompanied by anti-competitive and discriminatory PLA systems.