Lindsay VanHulle
June 12, 2018
Michigan Republicans last week narrowly repealed a 53-year-old state law that required contractors on public construction projects to pay union-rate wages and benefits.
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To Democrats and union members in the building trades, who erupted in anger after the vote tally was read, repealing the prevailing-wage law was yet another GOP-sponsored attack on working people – at a time when many Michiganders still feel like a decade-long recovery hasn’t helped them.
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The argument that repealing the law would make it harder to recruit people into the trades is one of a litany of criticisms offered by repeal opponents, who predict lower wages and no savings on state construction costs.
Will any of that happen in Michigan without prevailing wage?
Bridge asked two researchers, whose studies have been cited as evidence on both sides of the prevailing wage debate, to project what may happen in Michigan in the years ahead.
Frank Manzo IV is the policy director for the nonprofit Midwest Economic Policy Institute, an associate of the Illinois Economic Policy Institute. He has studied the effect of repealing prevailing wage, mostly recently in Indiana, and found it did not save money on construction projects and lowered worker wages. The group’s board of directors includes people who work primarily in the construction industry, including contractors and labor representatives.
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From your research, as a result of last week’s vote, what do you predict Michigan will look like five years from now?
Manzo: He said his group’s January study from Indiana found that repeal of that state’s “common construction law” in 2015 led to less-skilled workers in the field, more worker turnover, less productivity and lower wages.
Expect similar results in Michigan, he said.
“Any purported savings don’t materialize because productivity declines,” Matzo told Bridge.
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