“Right-to-Work” Laws in the Midwest Have Reduced Unionization and Lowered Wages

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Published by Frank Manzo IV, MPP
APRIL 3, 2017

Recent “right-to-work” laws have had negative consequences for many workers in Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Illinois Economic Policy Institute.

The analysis focuses on labor markets in six Midwest states from 2010 through 2016. Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin all enacted “right-to-work” (RTW) laws during this period, providing a regional experiment on the effects of the laws. Three neighboring states- Illinois, Minnesota, and Ohio- serve as a comparison group because they did not have RTW laws at the beginning of the time frame and still do not have RTW today.

As of 2016, there were significant differences between the two groups of states. Notably, workers in Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin earned 8% less per hour on average than their counterparts in Illinois, Minnesota, and Ohio.

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(See PDF of Study Here)

Contractors Make Case Against Prevailing Wage Repeal

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Published by Frank Manzo IV, MPP
APRIL 3, 2017

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Union and non-union contractors are voicing their opposition to a Missouri House proposal to eliminate a minimum wage requirement for public works projects.

The Coalition of Construction Contractor Associations, representing around 100,000 Missouri workers, told reporters in Jefferson City Wednesday what a proposed repeal of the prevailing wage could mean for workers.

Currently, local government organizations must pay workers more than the state’s $7.70-an-hour minimum wage for construction projects. Prevailing wage is determined by the Department of Labor and is based on the number of hours worked and the wages paid to contractors.

Wages are unique for each county. A general road construction laborer would be paid $31 an hour in St. Louis, but $25 in the northwestern corner of the state.

The main concern construction contractors have is that repealing prevailing wage will encourage companies to hire cheap, out-of-state labor, taking away jobs that would normally go to local contractors.

Government construction contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, and without a prevailing wage requirement, out-of-state contractors could potentially bid much lower than those in Missouri.

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California’s middle-class job of the future: Road worker

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

The state legislature’s approval of a massive infrastructure plan Thursday night promises a $50 billion investment in road and bridge repair over the next 10 years. That money is expected to drive a surge in the demand for construction workers and apprentices in California.

Andrea Bernstein – April 07 2017

The work will be funded primarily through a tax on gasoline and diesel fuel. Gov. Jerry Brown’s office points to a 2011 formula devised by the White House Council of Economic Advisers to estimate it will create about 65,000 jobs each year, many with middle-class employment, an area where the state has struggled to grow.

The workers in demand will be carpenters, cement masons, laborers, operating engineers and ironworkers, said Tom Holsman, CEO of the Association of General Contractors of California.

“Those are the ones that will be most impacted, and at present they’ve all been geared up for some time to accommodate the demand,” he said. “I think we are well-situated for the workload that will follow this revenue stream.”

Construction companies that get public works contracts in California are required to pay their employees what’s known as a “prevailing wage.” That’s made infrastructure work a solid middle-class career track that’s attracting young people who aren’t seeking four-year degrees.

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Proposed Prevailing Wage Changes Would Hurt the Ohio Economy

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Midwest Economic Policy Institute – Blog

A new study finds that weakening or repealing Ohio’s prevailing wage standard is unlikely to save taxpayer dollars. In fact, a weaker policy would increase taxpayer burdens as construction worker incomes decrease and their reliance on public assistance increases. A weaker law would also mean fewer resources for apprenticeship training in this fast-growing sector, less work for Ohio businesses and Ohio workers, and negative overall impacts on the Ohio economy.

The study was conducted by researchers at Kent State University, Bowling Green State University, Colorado State University-Pueblo, and the Midwest Economic Policy Institute.

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(Fact Sheet)

(See PDF Copy of Study)

Sen. Wallingford seeks to fix, not repeal prevailing wage

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Thursday, March 30, 2017
By Mark Bliss ~ Southeast Missourian

State Sen. Wayne Wallingford, R-Cape Girardeau, wants to fix rather than repeal Missouri’s prevailing wage law.

“I think most people realize this needs some fixes,” he said.

Gov. Eric Greitens has called for a repeal of the law, which requires contractors to pay a state-determined minimum wage for each construction trade on public-works projects.
…

Wallingford met earlier this year in Cape Girardeau with about 20 area contractors. Wallingford said union and nonunion contractors told him they don’t want lawmakers to repeal the prevailing-wage law.
…

Labor unions provide skilled training for their members and health insurance, according to Rick McGuire, business manager for Laborers Union Local 1140 in Cape Girardeau.
Tim Pekios, who operates nonunion Midwest Environmental Studies, a Cape Girardeau-based asbestos-abatement company, favors keeping the prevailing-wage law.

“It is not just a union thing,” he said Wednesday.

Pekios, who was one of the contractors who met with Wallingford in February, said the current law “allows all companies to get the best workers.”

Without such a law, low-wage companies with less-skilled workers could end up with public-works contracts, Pekios said.

(Read More)

Repealing prevailing wage laws hurts construction workers

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Posted March 24, 2017 at 3:21 pm by Ross Eisenbrey and Teresa Kroeger

…

Though they have protected construction workers’ wages for decades, 20 states have removed prevailing wage laws and several more have weakened them. Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia do not have any prevailing wage laws. Wisconsin no longer applies prevailing wage protections to local public construction projects, but still does for state highway projects. Arkansas and Missouri are currently both debating repeal.

Unsurprisingly, median construction wages are far lower (21.9 percent) in the 20 states that have no prevailing wage law than in the states that still do protect prevailing wages. Even after taking into account cost-of-living differences, median wages are almost 7 percent lower in states where there is no prevailing wage law. If state officials want to hit construction workers in the pocketbook, while folding to business interests, repealing prevailing wage laws is an effective way to do it.

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Class War in the Capital City

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Apr 5, 2017
By Don McIntosh

There’s a top-down class war under way, but unlike the 1930s, when thugs shot workers on strike picket lines, today’s business organizations are using “hired gun” lobbyists in state capitols, to rewrite the laws – all of them – in their favor.

That’s the basic argument made by political scientist Gordon Lafer in his new book The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time. Lafer, who teaches at the Labor Education and Research Center of the University of Oregon, spent five years compiling a 50-state, 30-issue database of corporate-backed legislation. He was also there on the front lines, testifying against business-backed anti-worker laws in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, New Hampshire, and other states.

The idea for the research came to him in early 2011. Lafer had just returned to Oregon after a year in Washington, D.C., as senior adviser to the U.S. House Labor Committee. Now a drama was beginning in the Wisconsin Legislature: A surprise attack on public sector workers’ right to collective bargaining drew 100,000 protesters to the state capitol. Attacks on worker rights and protections soon spread to dozens of states.

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(Hardcover of book available here)

DAVIS-BACON: EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES AND CAREERS IN AMERICA

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Davis-Bacon and prevailing wage laws have had astounding results since their inception.

by Mark Douglas

Paying workers higher wages means they become self-sufficient instead of becoming dependent on public assistance. This provides a two-fold benefit of improving quality of living and lowering burdens for American taxpayers. In addition, these laws and the technology needed to enforce them have had an unexpected boon-local communities now have the ability to track their disadvantaged worker hiring goals which has proven transformative for both disadvantaged families and for the communities in which they live.

What is Davis-Bacon and Prevailing Wage?
Every American strives to earn a fair wage which allows a lifetime of health and prosperity. Our country was built on this very foundation-that regardless of race, religion, or creed, all of us have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Today, however, many find themselves unable to live the American dream. Construction workers in particular are earning wages below the poverty line or losing jobs to out-of-state or illegal immigrants willing to work for low wages.

Often times unscrupulous contractors severely underpay their workers in an effort to undercut ethical competition and win government contracts. This results in a multi-billion-dollar tax burden to the American government through increased numbers of people enrolled in health care, welfare, food stamp, and other public assistance programs for these underpaid, uninsured workers.

In 1931, the Davis-Bacon Act sought to protect both federal construction workers and the public from greed driven contractors. Over the next ten years thirty states passed prevailing wage laws that accomplished the same mission in local communities. The purpose of these laws was to create an equal playing field for bidders so that contractors compete based on skill, productivity and safety instead of low bids through paying workers below-the-poverty-line wages.

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Trump signs bill that kills Obama-era Worker Safety Rule

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Kimberly Kindy
March 27 at 8:01 PM

President Trump signed a bill Monday that killed an Obama-era worker safety rule that required businesses competing for large federal contracts to disclose and correct serious safety and other labor law violations.

Earlier this month, the Senate voted to eliminate the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, which applied to contracts valued at $500,000 or more. Votes on the bill in both the House and Senate divided along party lines.

The Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces regulation was finalized in August but most of it was never implemented. Within days of it being finalized, the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) sued, securing a temporary injunction that prohibited the federal government from implementing it.

In a last-minute effort to fight for the rule earlier this month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a staff report that showed 66 of the federal government’s 100 largest contractors have at some point violated federal wage and hour laws. Since 2015, the report says, more than a third of the 100 largest OSHA penalties have been imposed on federal contractors.

(Read More)

Prevailing Wage Laws: What Do We Know?

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Institute for Construction Economics Research (ICERES)

In recent years, states and municipalities have been increasingly engaged in heated, often partisan, debates over the future of prevailing wage laws. In addition to the repeal of state prevailing wage laws in West Virginia and Kentucky, there have been high-profile political challenges in several states including Wisconsin and Nevada. Numerous city councils and county commissioners have been concurrently engaged in similar debates regarding local prevailing wage ordinances. References to economic studies often accompany these calls for legislative action, as advocates on both sides of the debate can point to papers supporting their position. The lack of consensus among researchers, however, is mostly attributable to differences in empirical methodology and scientific rigor. To improve the clarity of future public policy debates on prevailing wage laws, this paper summarizes the current state of research on these policies, highlighting recent academic findings and identifying empirical shortcomings inherent in a number of oft-cited non-academic studies.

(See full PDF of Study here)