The war on workers continues. Now the Republicans are willing to put our safety and the safety of our children behind their obsession to kill Unions. This is in the form of repealing our prevailing wage laws. Prevailing wage laws were first passed by Congressman Davis (R-PA) and Congressman Bacon (R-NY) after contractors brought migrant workers from Alabama to do the work on projects in their districts that were being paid for with tax dollars. The Davis-Bacon Act went into effect back in 1931 and was signed by Republican President Hoover. The law requires contractors to pay the prevailing wage of the area for publicly funded projects. This takes away the incentive for contractors to bring in out of state (or country) workers, who work for low pay, and increase their profit margin as well as beating their competition in the bidding process. As wages very from place to place, the Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of labor uses surveys from local projects to determine the rate of pay for each craft. These are construction projects and so skilled craftsman get paid different rates based on their craft, and those rates of pay are generally bargained for by the Trade Unions. The GOP took away contract labor agreements a few years ago, so you can’t require contractors to use union labor anymore, but if you pay union wages, you have an incentive to use union workers because they have gone through years of training and apprenticeships and do better work for the same money. So the prevailing wage laws in Missouri result in local workers doing the work, usually trained and skilled in their craft resulting in better construction and better results for the same money. Though Republicans passed Davis-Bacon to keep contractors from bringing migrants in and taking away local jobs and money, they now want to repeal it so that the Trade Unions lose the work, and are further weakened. This will not result in huge savings for the schools, libraries, fire houses and police stations, but it will result in greater profits for out of state contractors who use migrant workers to do the work and send their pay back home, and take it out of our communities. Local workers spend locally but migrant workers spend who knows where. But it’s not just the money, when a guy is pouring concrete one day and being an electrician the next, he is not going to do the same quality work as a journeyman electrician and a cement finisher. So our children get off the bus and go into an unsafe building, and the grocery store and tire store don’t sell to the workers, just so the Republicans can hold on to power. Had enough yet?
By
Chuck Banks
8th CD Chair, MDP