Political Quotes

“Let me just say that the Davis- Bacon Act prevents competition for construction contracts from artificially depressing local labor standards. The Davis-Bacon Act will prevent subverting the prevailing wage laws, which will lead to shoddy construction and substantial cost overruns. Under the prevailing wage laws, contractors are forced to compete on the basis of who can best train, best equip, and best manage a construction crew, not on the basis of who can assemble the cheapest, most exploitable workforce, either locally or through importing labor from outside. The Davis-Bacon Act does not require a union wage; it requires prevailing wage based upon surveys of wages and benefits that are actually paid to various job classifications of construction workers, such as iron workers in a community, without regard to whether they belong to a union or not. According to the Department of Labor, a whopping 72 percent of prevailing wage rates issued in 2000 were based upon nonunion wage rates. A union wage prevails only if the Department of Labor survey determines that the local union wage is paid to more than 50 percent of the workers in that job classification. Now higher wages and skills result in greater productivity and lower cost. It's so much greater among high-wage, high-skill workers that projects that use high-skilled workers and high-paid workers often cost less than those that use the low-wage, low-skilled workers due to repairs, revisions, and lengthy delays.…”