May 9, 2018 |1:24 PM CDT
BY MARK GRUENBERG
WASHINGTON (PAI)-In what is a perennial battle, a bipartisan coalition of representatives once again defeated right wing Republican Steve King’s scheme to cut construction workers’ pay by dumping the Davis-Bacon Act.
The 172-243 vote came during debate April 26 on legislation renewing the Federal Aviation Administration for another several years. Workers picked up another win on that measure when lobbying by all but one of the unions representing airline workers forced panel chairman Bud Shuster, R-Pa., to dump his plan to privatize the U.S. air traffic control system.
Privatization would have put the system under a supposedly non-partisan board dominated by the airlines. It also would eliminate current worker protections, the anti-privatization unions – including the Communications Workers, the Teamsters and others – said.
Only the National Air Traffic Controllers Association backed privatization. It claimed Shuster kept the worker protections in the new FAA bill, HR4. The House later passed the bill. The AFL-CIO supported the final version.
King tried to take out the construction workers’ pay by his perennial amendment, saying the Davis-Bacon Act would not apply to airport construction. Since the federal government, through ticket taxes, funds most airport construction, that would have cut the wages of any workers toiling on such projects.
Davis-Bacon was introduced and approved by Republicans in the depths of the Great Depression, in 1931. It mandates contractors on all federally funded construction pay locally prevailing wages, set by Labor Department surveys, to their workers.