Labor leader: Prevailing wage protects workers from ‘race to bottom’

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Matt Glynn , and Jonathan D. Epstein
Published June 30, 2017 | Updated June 30, 2017

New York State has had a prevailing wage law since 1894, and supporters say it’s needed to protect workers from being undercut and underpaid by contractors and government agencies. They also argue that prevailing wage laws help ensure that the size of public contracts – and the potential for a bidding race to the bottom to win them – don’t destabilize local and regional construction markets.

But critics say the laws hurt free-market competition, drive up costs on public projects and provide little real 30benefit to the economy other than protecting labor unions.

Conservative researcher E.J. McMahon and union advocate Richard Lipsitz Jr. recently sat down with The News to talk about the controversy over the state’s prevailing wage requirements.

Richard Lipsitz Jr. sees the prevailing wage law as protection against the “race to the bottom.”

The president of the Western New York Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, an umbrella organization covering 100,000 union members in six counties, Lipsitz has been active in the labor movement since the 1970s, and the federation he leads has been outspoken in the drive to raise the state’s minimum wage.

Q: How does the state’s prevailing wage benefit construction workers?

A: It is a wedge against the race to the bottom in the construction field. Without provisions like prevailing wage, there would be no guarantee that a contractor wouldn’t go down and pay the minimum that he has to or she has to. It’s a rule that keeps this race from the bottom from being carried out in the construction field.

And it also helps with the workers in all other fields. The idea of a prevailing wage, as a good wage and benefits package that people can live on, is mostly talked about in the construction field. But the Commerce Department keeps a prevailing wage on all kinds of occupations in New York State, not just for building trades. So I don’t think it’s quite right to just see it as a construction trades question.

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Oregon Issues Rules In Advance Of New Minimum Wage Law

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

by Chris Lehman
June 15, 2016 5:56 p.m.
Updated: June 15, 2016 7 p.m.

Oregon employers have new guidance from the state on how much to pay their employees when the state’s minimum wage goes up next month. The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries released rules Wednesday meant to clear up one of the questions surrounding the legislatively-approved minimum wage hike.

The state’s minimum wage goes up July 1, but the amount of the increase depends on where you work. The wage goes up 25 cents per hour in rural counties and 50 cents per hour everywhere else. Next year, the state moves to a three-tiered system which gives workers in the Portland metro area a higher rate than the rest of the state.

But what about workers whose job sometimes takes them across the boundaries of the state’s three-tiered minimum wage map? Employers are worried they’d have to keep meticulous track of how much time any given worker spent in any given place.

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150 Americans Die Each Day Due to Workplace Injury or Disease According to New Report

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

WASHINGTON, DC – According to a report released today by the AFL-CIO, 4,628 workers were killed in the United States during 2012 due to workplace injuries. Additionally an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases, resulting in a loss of nearly 150 workers each day from preventable workplace conditions.

“A hard day’s work should not be a death sentence,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “It is unconscionable that any worker has to choose between life and putting food on the table. When Congress votes to weaken worker protections or defund critical programs and when big corporations marginalize and deemphasize worker safety, they insult the memory of all those workers who have died while fighting to attain the American Dream.”

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(Copy of Report)