Opinion: Wage discrimination in construction industry makes minimum standards a good idea

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By HILDA L. SOLIS
PUBLISHED: August 30, 2017 at 11:49 am
UPDATED: August 30, 2017 at 5:32 pm

Equal pay for equal work remains elusive, even here in progressive California.

A recent study by Smart Cities Prevail showed that Latinos make up two thirds of the construction workforce, yet only make about 70 cents on the dollar of white workers with the same skills. The study noted that Latino construction workers also are significantly more likely to be uninsured and to struggle with housing affordability.
Low minimum wage standards are one factor that contributes to these types of disparities.

California legislators are soon expected to consider streamlining development of more housing across our state. At its core, the proposal involves removing certain regulatory hurdles in exchange for guarantees that a small percentage of new developments will include “affordable” units.

A similar effort failed last year when no agreement was reached on wage standards for workers on streamlined projects.

According to industry research, workers’ wages and benefits are just 15 percent of the total cost of constructing housing. By comparison, profits for developers and contractors are 18 percent of costs and growing faster than the cost of labor.

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And with labor standards being eroded, other problems have become more pervasive.

For example, wage theft occurs when employees are paid for fewer hours than they worked, less than legally required, or when their employer is paying in cash and cheating on payroll taxes. California’s construction industry has seen a 400 percent increase in wage theft since the 1970s-a period that has also seen a dramatic increase in the share of immigrants in our construction workforce.

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White House stops plan for companies to report worker pay by race and gender

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By James F. Peltz – Contact Reporter
August 30, 2017 at 2:15 pm

The White House has halted an Obama administration rule that would require businesses to report worker pay data by gender, race and ethnic groups in hopes of narrowing wage gaps among workers.

The plan was announced by President Obama in early 2016 and was set to take effect early next year.

But the Trump administration, siding with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others, contended that the data collection would be too burdensome for firms and questioned how effective the information might be in fighting wage discrimination.

Critics of the White House move, which came in a memo from the Office of Management and Budget on Tuesday, were outraged.

“Make no mistake – it’s an all-out attack on equal pay,” Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement. “Today’s action sends a clear message to employers: If you want to ignore pay inequities and sweep them under the rug, this administration has your back.”

The plan would have expanded a 2014 executive order that the Labor Department collect wage data by gender, race and ethnicity from federal contractors.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had proposed that all employers with at least 100 workers submit the data across 10 job categories and 12 pay ranges on a form they already are required to submit annually that includes employment data by gender, race and ethnicity.

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