G.O.P. Expands Labor Battle to Laws Setting State Construction Wages

New York Times ^ | MAY 2, 2015 | MONICA DAVEY

[reaganaut1]

A bill that would end prescribed wages on public construction projects in Indiana awaits the signature of Gov. Mike Pence.

...

Indiana’s Republican-held legislature narrowly voted in April to repeal the state’s so-called common construction wage, a provision that had been around in various forms for 80 years and that sets pay standards for workers on publicly financed projects.

The debate over the change, which Mr. Pence has said he supports, was muted compared with two decades ago, when tens of thousands of union workers turned up at the State Capitol and held off repeal.

“It’s just a different era today,” Brian C. Bosma, the House speaker, said in an interview. “There’s more concern about efficiency and taxpayer protection than there was 20 years ago.”

Mr. Bosma added that he believed the change would save at least 10 percent on government construction projects without gutting the wages of workers. “I couldn’t hear an adequate explanation from anyone as to why the public projects — funded by the public — shouldn’t have the same benefit of quality competition as the private sector enjoys,” he said.

Efforts to end prevailing-wage laws are emerging in statehouses around the nation. Opponents say these efforts would lower wages and see them as a new front in a battle by increasingly Republican legislatures to weaken labor unions. Advocates, like Mr. Bosma, say the bills are aimed at sparing the budgets of struggling cities and states through free-market principles, and ending an inconsistent, inflated and sometimes politicized system for calculating what wage should be the standard.

In West Virginia, where Republicans took control of the Legislature this year for the first time since the 1930s, lawmakers ended the prevailing wage for projects worth $500,000 or less.

[reaganaut1]

Good. I hope Pence has gotten better at explaining himself.

[CPT Clay]

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