BY: MIKE ELK
MAY 15, 2018
As North Carolina teachers go out on strike tomorrow, they will be joined by the ranks of the state’s construction unions. Much like teachers, who lack the right to collective bargaining in the state, construction workers employed on North Carolina’s state-funded projects, such as schools, lack the ability to have their wages set by union-endorsed prevailing wage standards.
They say the lack of collective bargaining rights for public employees in North Carolina is symptomatic of how the state also undervalues all workers employed on projects financed on the public’s dime.
“When your public employees are organized, it sets the standard and foundation for everybody else,” says North Carolina IBEW Local 379 President Scott Thrower. “When they are not, the private sector is setting the ground.”
While construction workers in other states enjoy the benefits of prevailing wage standards, construction workers in North Carolina do not. Under prevailing wage standards, contractors are forced to pay the median wage that construction workers are paid in that region as determined by a government survey-the idea being that government-funded projects are supposed to keep wages from falling.
“Prevailing wage levels the playing field,” says Thrower.
Without a prevailing wage, contractors on state-funded projects can simply pay their workers whatever they want.
While unionized electrical contractors in the state, working on federally funded projects that use prevailing wage standards, make a minimum of $25 an hour with retirement and health care benefits, non-union electrical contractors work on state-funded projects that often pay as little as $15-$20 per hour due to the lack of prevailing wage standards on state-funded projects.
Worse, union leaders say the lack of prevailing wage standards negatively affects high road contractors, who use higher training and safety standards.