A few weeks ago, we offered a perspective on the Republican party’s silence regarding prevailing wage laws, in general, and the federal Davis-Bacon Act, in particular. In this post we want to take a different view – that of the Democratic party and the challenges it faces in dealing with prevailing wage rates.
While the underlying concept of Davis-Bacon Act wage determinations hits at the heart of the Democratic agenda – namely, creating higher wages to help develop and/or boost a blue-collar middle class, Davis-Bacon rates are not without their pitfalls for the Democrats. Namely, that the Democratic establishment are not enthusiastic supporters of prevailing wage laws because, as we suggested in an earlier post, federal Davis-Bacon wage rates (or California prevailing wage rates, or…) empower open-shop contractors and allow them to offer high wages without the benefit of a union; and, unless you live in a cave somewhere, you know that labor unions tend to side with Democrats!
The resulting dilemma for Democrats, of course, is that they know they cannot criticize federal prevailing wage laws without appearing insensitive to the real value that prevailing wage contracting provides. And appearing insensitive to voters, as we know, doesn’t work well at the voting booth. Which is where PLA’s come into the picture. With PLA’s, labor unions can support the high wages and good benefits provided by prevailing wage regulations, but with a twist – namely, that contractors on a government-funded public works project be subject to union collective bargaining agreements. That’s right. Despite the high Davis-Bacon scale, which includes mandatory allocations for employee benefits, the unions are trying to do an end-run around open-shop contractors and lock-up federal Davis Bacon jobs. Which, when you wrap it in the language of insuring good jobs and great benefits for employees, can sound pretty attractive to a voting population… except for the fact that those good jobs and great benefits are already provided for by the Davis Bacon law, as well as state prevailing wage laws.
Now we’ve told you what we think. What do you think? We want to know!