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March 16, 2009
Only Half as Much of the Project Done?
Like the song used to say: "Look for the Union label."
State governments that contract jobs paid for with stimulus money will be required to pay workers on construction projects union wages rather than market rates -- good news for workers but good news for not as many of them....Los Angeles County officials who received $8 million in Community Development Block Grant money to weatherize homes for low-income people said they typically bid the job low and pay about $15 an hour for a worker to caulk windows. However, under union scale, that job pays $25 an hour and $5 in benefits, so instead of repairing 100 homes, they might do 50 homes for the same price.
Elsewhere, the union wage for a plumber in Long Island is $45 an hour, the market rate is $30. In Las Vegas, the Davis-Bacon wage for a glass worker is $57 an hour, a job the Nevada State Housing division currently pays $15 to do.
...In the past, cities and states got around the Davis-Bacon provision by diluting federal money with local cash, but with the stimulus, that's not allowed. One think tank estimates that with about $200 billion in the stimulus set for construction projects, Davis-Bacon raises costs by about $17 billion.
Posted by tree hugging sister at March 16, 2009 10:37 PM
Comments
Ah, Davis-Bacon! Uncle Sugar's mandatory bowing and scraping to the unions. If you're going to throw away money, why practice restraint?
Posted by: JeffS at March 17, 2009 12:18 AM