Michigan petitioners stretch truth for signatures (MI)

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Jonathan Oosting
Published 11:32 p.m. ET Aug. 2, 2017 Updated 7:28 a.m. ET Aug. 3, 2017

Lansing – Summer is petition season in Michigan, where paid circulators are taking advantage of warm weather and public events to collect signatures for at least three statewide initiatives – and sometimes stretching the truth in their sales pitch to voters.

A circulator working a park concert last month in Lansing approached a Detroit News reporter and requested signatures for two separate petitions, including one she said was “for the teachers and construction workers to help protect their wages, benefits and pensions,” a claim she repeated twice.

The initiative actually seeks to repeal the state’s prevailing wage law, which guarantees union-level wages and benefits for workers on some government-funded construction projects. It has no direct connection to teacher compensation, but supporters contend it would reduce school construction costs. Critics argue it would drive down worker pay on construction projects.

…

His bill would make it a misdemeanor crime for a paid or volunteer circulator to “knowingly and willfully circulate, publish, or exhibit a false statement or misrepresentation concerning the contents, purport or effect” of a statewide petition. Violators could face up to 93 days in jail and/or a fine of up to $500.

“I believe that the petition process is a fundamental part of our democracy here in Michigan, but you’re stealing that from somebody when you lie to them, when people think they’re signing one thing and they’re actually signing something else,” Hertel said.

Similar anti-lying legislation was introduced in the House by Rep. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, but the proposals have not yet been taken up by Republican majorities in either chamber.

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Cooper signs worker misclassification, tax bills into law (NC)

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By Associated Press |
Posted: Fri 9:34 PM, Aug 11, 2017

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – Gov. Roy Cooper says legislation he signed will help North Carolina workers when employers intentionally misclassify them as independent contractors to avoid paying taxes and other benefits.

Cooper signed two bills Friday the General Assembly approved last week.

One addresses employee “misclassification” by confirming the creation of an office within the North Carolina Industrial Commission to investigate companies and discourage the practice. Former Gov. Pat McCrory signed an executive order directing the commission’s new work, but the law makes the effort permanent.

The other signed bill makes various tax law changes, including the creation of an income tax refund “checkoff” for breast and cervical cancer detection.

Two other bills remain on Cooper’s desk. He has until late Monday to sign or veto them. Otherwise, they become law.

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Immigrant workers rally in NE Portland to shed light on problems in construction industry (OR)

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Posted: Jul 28, 2017 12:34 AM EDT
Updated: Jul 28, 2017 12:34 AM EDT
By FOX 12 Staff

A group representing immigrant construction workers say they’re victims of rampant wage theft with many workers too afraid to come forward.

On Thursday the group held a rally that was organized by Portland Jobs with Justice for Immigrant Carpenters in Portland-area construction.

Workers took the podium to talk about instances of wage theft and other abuses they say they’ve experienced.

Workers say Thursday’s rally was to shed light on what they call a huge problem in Portland’s construction industry.

“Portland is under a huge construction boom right now. We got cranes all over, buildings going up left and right. But there’s an underground problem,” said Ben Besom with Northwest Carpenters Union. “It’s a really hard number to quantify because a lot of the people being exploited on these projects are afraid to come out of the shadows and tell their stories.”

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Houston’s Attempt To Curb Wage Theft (TX)

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Whatever came from Houston’s Wage Theft Ordinance? We take a look.

ALLISON LEE | POSTED ON
JULY 18, 2017, 7:00 AM (LAST UPDATED: JULY 18, 2017, 10:22 AM)

It’s called, “wage theft.” And it’s a problem here in Houston, that the city tried to address. More on how that worked out in a minute.

But first, just what constitutes wage theft?

It takes many forms. Not paying workers overtime they are entitled to, working off-the-clock, minimum wage violations, incorrectly categorizing employees as independent contractors, illegal deductions in pay, and not paying workers at all are all common examples of wage theft.

Stealing workers’ wages is an issue that even compelled President Obama to implement an executive order back in 2014 which, in part, discouraged businesses from committing wage theft, by not allowing them to receive federal contracts. That was repealed by President Trump back in March.

Tom Padgett is a lawyer in Houston, who says he represents lots of wage theft cases.
“The problem is that employers hold all the cards. And employees are afraid. They are afraid of retaliation…. I mean, we’ve had employees who have asserted their rights, and then the employers fire them, and they lose their house. Or they can’t afford their health insurance anymore, and their baby gets sick. So there’s a lot of terrible stories out there,” Padgett said.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (commonly known as FLSA) is a federal statute, put in place to ensure proper payment for workers. But Padgett’s firm says federal and state agencies don’t really have the man power to truly enforce that.

“There’s no specific Texas wage and hour law that would protect people. We have to go to federal court or we have to get a municipality, or a local ordinance, like Houston,” Padgett said. “But I haven’t seen any impact from the Houston ordinance, or any change at all.”

Padgett is referring to the Houston Wage Theft Ordinance, which was passed in 2013. It was put in place to deter businesses from stealing worker’s wages, by banning violators from working with the city. The ordinance even effectively bans businesses from operating in Houston, by way of not being able to renew permits and licenses.

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Leroy Miller: Repealing prevailing wage will hurt vets (WI)

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Leroy Miller
7/19/17

I love my country. I’ve fought for my country. My brothers and sisters have died for this country. I want to continue to serve my country.

I am a heavy-equipment operator, happily and dutifully building new infrastructure for Wisconsin communities.

My concern is, and has been, what state legislators are proposing in a full repeal of the state’s longstanding prevailing wage law. This is the law that protects Wisconsin workers from low-wage-paying, out-of-state contractors who will be free to pay their workers substandard wages in the interest of undercutting Wisconsin contractors and effectively stealing jobs here. And guess what? It’s working.

Last legislative session our elected leaders in Madison partially repealed prevailing wage for municipal-funded projects, which went into effect this January. Since then, a state review of projects to-date found there has been a more than 53 percent increase in out-of-state contractors securing Wisconsin work. Those are Wisconsin jobs being lost, Wisconsin tax dollars leaving the state and hard-working Wisconsin families being hurt. You don’t have to be a political wonk to understand how and who this hurts – Wisconsin workers.

Why as a proud veteran am I involved? Many of us veterans are drawn especially to two lines of work after our service – law enforcement and construction. I’ve chosen construction because I want to continue to serve my country in a meaningful way but lacked the necessary skills to make the transition. Thanks to many of the construction trades in Wisconsin they have specifically designed apprenticeship programs for veterans to provide them the necessary training and skills to transition into the construction industry.

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Report: Republicans Did Not Consider Social Costs of Prevailing Wage Law Repeal

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By Jim Lundstrom, Peninsula Pulse
June 30th, 2017

Republican lawmakers have set their sights on repealing the state’s prevailing wage law for public projects as a way to save taxpayer money on infrastructure costs, but opponents say it is an attack on the middle-class, blue-collar worker.

The bill would end all prevailing wage laws for state-funded construction projects, and Senate sponsor Leah Vukmir (R-Brookfield) claims it will save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau recently reported “existing research on the impact of prevailing wage laws on construction costs is mixed and inconclusive.”

A report released June 19 by the Midwest Economic Policy Institute say advocates for repeal have not considered the social costs of such a move.

“The worst-case potential social costs of repealing prevailing wage range from $224 million to $337 million every year,” the report states. “When worker wages are cut, they contribute less in state and federal income taxes. At the same time, more workers qualify for and rely on government assistance. This results in less money in the state economy and less money in the pockets of hardworking citizens.”

The report goes on to say “between four and 12 percent of construction workers in Wisconsin would newly qualify for government assistance if prevailing wage were repealed, depending on the severity of the wage cut. This is in addition to the 14.5 percent who already qualify for government assistance in the state.”

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In April, Gumieny and others in the construction business attended the 3rd Annual Construction Workers’ Memorial Service in Madison to recognize individuals who lost their lives in construction accidents in the state. As the memorial procession walked from Monona Terrace to St. Patrick’s Church for a memorial service, Gumieny said they passed four infrastructure construction projects near the state Capitol, and three of those were being done by out-of-state outfits.

“Since January of this year, we’ve lost 53 percent of that work that used to be here for Wisconsinites,” Gumieny said. “The study was from January through last month. Fifty-three percent of that work went to out-of-state contractors. It will not benefit anybody for that loss of work here for Wisconsinites in the construction industry. For what this legislation is doing, it’s unfair to the people of Wisconsin. The only time you see fair government is when you put them in gridlock and have equal Republican to Democrats. At that point the only thing that really comes out are things that are truly good for the people.”

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Labor leader: Prevailing wage protects workers from ‘race to bottom’

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By Matt Glynn , and Jonathan D. Epstein
Published June 30, 2017 | Updated June 30, 2017

New York State has had a prevailing wage law since 1894, and supporters say it’s needed to protect workers from being undercut and underpaid by contractors and government agencies. They also argue that prevailing wage laws help ensure that the size of public contracts – and the potential for a bidding race to the bottom to win them – don’t destabilize local and regional construction markets.

But critics say the laws hurt free-market competition, drive up costs on public projects and provide little real 30benefit to the economy other than protecting labor unions.

Conservative researcher E.J. McMahon and union advocate Richard Lipsitz Jr. recently sat down with The News to talk about the controversy over the state’s prevailing wage requirements.

Richard Lipsitz Jr. sees the prevailing wage law as protection against the “race to the bottom.”

The president of the Western New York Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, an umbrella organization covering 100,000 union members in six counties, Lipsitz has been active in the labor movement since the 1970s, and the federation he leads has been outspoken in the drive to raise the state’s minimum wage.

Q: How does the state’s prevailing wage benefit construction workers?

A: It is a wedge against the race to the bottom in the construction field. Without provisions like prevailing wage, there would be no guarantee that a contractor wouldn’t go down and pay the minimum that he has to or she has to. It’s a rule that keeps this race from the bottom from being carried out in the construction field.

And it also helps with the workers in all other fields. The idea of a prevailing wage, as a good wage and benefits package that people can live on, is mostly talked about in the construction field. But the Commerce Department keeps a prevailing wage on all kinds of occupations in New York State, not just for building trades. So I don’t think it’s quite right to just see it as a construction trades question.

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Prevailing wage, project labor agreements protect living standards for construction workers

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By ROBBIE HUNTER
July 6, 2017 at 12:01 am

In an era of political hyperventilation, it might be a good idea for some critics to take a deep breath before they launch into their attacks on the prevailing wage laws and project labor agreements that protect the living standards of construction workers in California and across the nation.

From Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, anti-union writers in recent weeks have incorrectly branded the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act that wrote the prevailing wage into the law on taxpayer-funded construction projects as born of racism and a rip-off of public funds. The same critics also have falsely characterized project labor agreements as costly to taxpayers and unfair to nonunion construction companies.

Now, for the facts.

Two Republican congressmen, Sen. James Davis of Pennsylvania and U.S. Rep. Roger Bacon of New York, sponsored their legislation 86 years ago to establish a minimum wage on taxpayer-funded construction projects, based on local measures of central tendency in any of the covered construction trades.

The idea behind the prevailing wage is to keep unscrupulous operators from low-bidding the legitimate competition to the detriment of the local workforce. The effect has been to allow blue-collar workers – 400,000 of whom are represented by the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California – to maintain their place in the American middle class.

Of the false charges that have been lodged of late about Davis-Bacon, perhaps the most repugnant is the smear that recirculates every so often that the act originated as an outgrowth of racism. The critics troll through the historic record to quote some congressmen in the debate over Davis-Bacon who supported the law based on their own warped view that it was designed to protect higher-paid white workers in the northeast represented by the authors of the law from “cheap colored labor” that would be imported to their districts from the South. The critics fail, however, to report Congressman Bacon’s reply that imported workers came in white skin as well as black.

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Frank Manzo IV: Lawmakers should consider the social cost of construction wage cuts

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June 28, 2017
Frank Manzo IV | Policy Director
Midwest Economic Policy Institute

According to the conservative Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (WTA), state legislators and Gov. Scott Walker may soon act to cut the wages of private construction workers by as much as 44 percent.

How? By repealing Wisconsin’s prevailing wage law – the minimum wage standard on state-funded construction projects such as highways, bridges, and other critical infrastructure.

What they haven’t told you is that their own numbers suggestthat this could actually cost taxpayers more than $300 million per year. This is the social cost of wage cuts that would remove thousands of Wisconsin’s working families from the middle class.
The math is really quite simple.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data on which WTA’s analysis relies, the skilled construction workers who would be affected by prevailing wage repeal earn an average of $51,000 per year. The 44 percent savings scenario that WTA and their allies in the Legislature and Walker administration have promised would require that average wage to drop to about $29,000 per year.

When you add up all of the health-care, home-heating, and food subsidies for which these workers and their families would then qualify, as well as low-income tax credits and the lost income tax revenue that the state would have to find from other taxpayers, the total cost of Wisconsin’s wage cut exceeds $300 million annually.

How can any legislator – especially those who campaigned on promises of lifting wages and fiscal responsibility – defend such a position?

The short answer is by ignoring basic math, the fundamental realities of the construction industry and the economy, or both.

Construction is dangerous work. When it comes to the things the public relies on – schools, roads, transit systems and water facilities – having well-trained professionals on the job matters. By establishing criteria that reflect local market standards and incentivize contractors to invest in workforce training, research shows that prevailing wage laws dramatically increase local hiring, productivity, efficiency and safety on the worksite. In doing so, they simultaneously reduce waste, and reduce spending on fuels, materials, equipment and purchased services.

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Service Contract Act and Davis-Bacon Act Under Attack

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By David Madland and Karla Walter
Posted on June 27, 2017, 11:45 am

The federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars annually contracting out goods and services, including building highways, employing janitorial services in federal office buildings, and hiring security at nuclear laboratories. Prevailing wage laws-such as the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 and the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act of 1965-help ensure that this spending does not drive down local wage and benefit standards; that businesses providing good jobs can compete; and that taxpayers get good value for their money.

Unfortunately, prevailing wage laws are under attack and could be repealed by this Congress. Several bills have been introduced to eliminate these long-standing laws, and reports indicate that these provisions could be attached to must-pass bills such as appropriations or defense authorization legislation. Despite his claims to be a pro-worker president, President Donald Trump has not committed to supporting these laws. Repealing prevailing wage laws would cut the wages of millions of workers and their families and ultimately cost taxpayers dearly.

The Davis-Bacon Act applies to workers on federally supported construction contracts, while the Service Contract Act applies to service workers on federal contracts. Both laws ensure that workers on government-funded projects are paid the going market rate-or the prevailing wage-based on surveys of wages and benefits for occupations in each local market. This helps standardize wages across an industry and ensures that government spending does not drive down market wages. In areas where there are a number of high-road firms-firms that treat their workers well-and market wages and benefits are high, the prevailing wage helps support good jobs. In areas where market wages are lower, the prevailing wage is also generally lower. Yet no matter the condition of the local labor market, prevailing wage laws help ensure that the federal government doesn’t undercut local standards.

Without these standards, the government purchasing process could cause wages in the market to spiral downward: This is because the government frequently awards contracts to the lowest bidder, which gives a natural advantage to those companies that pay their employees the least. This is especially true because of the federal government’s significant purchasing power. In many cases, the federal government is the largest buyer by far in the market, with the power to set the rate for goods, services, and labor. As a result, government spending could lower wages for workers throughout the private sector.

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