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Opinion of the Court
plained more fully below, we now answer this question in the affirmative.
IV
Permitting the States to participate freely in the marketplace is not only consistent with NLRA pre-emption principles generally but also, in these cases, promotes the legislative goals that animated the passage of the §§ 8(e) and (f) exceptions for the construction industry. In 1959, Congress amended the NLRA to add § 8(f) and modify § 8(e). Section 8(f) explicitly permits employers in the construction industry—but no other employers—to enter into prehire agreements. Prehire agreements are collective-bargaining agreements providing for union recognition, compulsory union dues or equivalents, and mandatory use of union hiring halls, prior to the hiring of any employees. 935 F. 2d, at 356; Jim McNeff, Inc. v. Todd, 461 U. S. 260, 265-266 (1983). The 1959 amendment adding a proviso to subsection (e) permits a general contractor's prehire agreement to require an employer not to hire other contractors performing work on that particular project site unless they agree to become bound by the terms of that labor agreement. See Woelke & Romero Framing, Inc. v. NLRB, 456 U. S. 645, 657 (1982). Section 8(f) contains a final proviso that permits employees, once hired, to utilize the NLRB election process under §§ 9(c) and (e) of the Act, 29 U. S. C. §§ 159(c) and (e), if they wish to reject the bargaining representative or to cancel the union security provisions of the prehire agreement. See NLRB v. Iron Workers, 434 U. S. 335, 345 (1978).
It is undisputed that the Agreement between Kaiser and BCTC is a valid labor contract under §§ 8(e) and (f). As noted above, those sections explicitly authorize this type of contract between a union and an employer like Kaiser, which is engaged primarily in the construction industry, covering employees engaged in that industry.
Of course, the exceptions provided for the construction industry in §§ 8(e) and (f), like the prohibitions from which
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