by: Jack Ramage
Posted:
Aug 16, 2019 / 12:00 AM
The Aug. 11 letter “High Gas Tax Feeds a Broken System” by Nathan A. Benefield, in response to the Aug. 4 article “Why Is Pa.’s Gas Tax So High? We’ve Got a Lot of Roads,” identifies three reasons. He is correct on two of those reasons; Pennsylvania gas taxes fund mass transit operations and pay for much of the state police budget, not just roads. Prevailing wages however, are not a contributing factor.
Prevailing wages do not increase the cost of publicly funded construction projects. In those states that have repealed prevailing wage laws, the promise of lower-cost public construction projects never materialized. Casually concluding that eliminating prevailing wage requirements will automatically reduce construction costs is an out-of-touch misconception of today’s economic environment.
Every segment of the economy is competing desperately for qualified workers. Allowing contractors to lower construction workers’ wages in order to gain an unfair advantage over the competition will cause a race to the bottom and exacerbate the shrinking workforce crisis resulting in costlier projects, substandard workmanship and delayed completions due to a shrinking number of skilled workers in construction. States throughout the country are reporting shortages in skilled construction labor. These shortages are especially acute in states where prevailing wage laws have been repealed.
Prevailing wages create a level playing field by establishing reasonable wages and benefits for workers building our state’s infrastructure projects. Without prevailing wages, unscrupulous contractors will import cheap labor and eliminate good paying jobs for the citizens of Pennsylvania, creating an environment where no one wins: not the workers, not the local contractors and, most of all, the taxpayers of Pennsylvania.