September 06, 2018 10:41 PM
(ABC 6 News)
When a construction worker goes to work on a project with a private contractor, the contractor decides what workers will be paid. However, when they work on a government-funded project, workers must be paid “prevailing wages.”
President of South Eastern Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council Nate O’Reilly says for every construction project funded by the state, workers must be paid a minimum base rate called “prevailing wage.”
“When public dollars are being spent…it creates that level playing field to ensure the public expenditures reflect the local area standards for wages and benefits,” said Nate.
In the private construction industry, the lowest bidding contractor almost always gets the construction job. Executive Director of the Fair Contracting Foundation Mike Wilde says prevailing wage is intended to protect local workers and ensure they get paid fairly. This prevents the job from going automatically to whoever can do it the cheapest, which Mike says is often workers from out of the area.
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“You want people that live in the area, perhaps reside in the housing, and support the economy. You want them to be your workforce, as opposed to people who might come in and do unskilled, unsafe, and insufficient work and perhaps take the wages out,” said Mike.