West Virginia's construction workers deserve better

In 2016, the West Virginia Legislature repealed the state’s prevailing wage law, which set pay standards for workers on public construction projects.

The intent of prevailing wage laws was to prevent these projects from turning into a race to the bottom, with out-of-state contractors profiting at the public expense by underbidding local businesses and importing low wage, low skill workers laboring under unsafe conditions.

The idea for that kind of legislation didn’t come from a bunch of labor radicals. Rather it was the brainchild of two Republican U.S. senators, James J. Davis of Pennsylvania and Robert L. Bacon of Long Island, New York.

In 1927, Bacon was angered to learn that an Alabama contractor won a bid to build a veteran’s hospital in his district, bringing in poorly treated workers to do the job. In his words, they were “herded onto this job, they were housed in shacks, they were paid a very low wage, and ... it seems to me that the federal government should not engage in construction work in any state and undermine the labor conditions and the labor wages paid in that state.”

In his view, setting locally based wage standards for public projects would ensure fairness and allow local and distant contractors to compete for bids on an equal basis.

Davis believed that the government had a responsibility to “comply with the local standards of wages and labor prevailing in the locality where the building construction is to take place.”

Their legislation, known as the Davis-Bacon Act, was passed in congress in 1931 and became the model for state prevailing wage laws, including the one that used to protect West Virginia’s workers and contractors.

Opponents of the legislation, who, as far as I can tell, are also opponents of working people generally, argued that repealing the legislation would save taxpayers money.

For example, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, argued at the time that “without prevailing wage, you could build five schools for the price of three.” He also claimed that the repeal would save the state $200-300 million annually.

If that really happened, the state would have a huge budget surplus. Instead, the governor has ordered $100 million in cuts due to a budget shortfall.

And the School Building Authority reported in 2017 that, while workers’ wages had gone down on school projects since repealing prevailing wage, “the overall cost of school construction does not reflect a reduction of overall construction costs on SBA projects at this time. At this time the SBA is not realizing an overall savings that would allow for the construction of ‘five new schools for the price of three,’ as some have previously claimed.”

What did go down were the inflation-adjusted wages of carpenters, electricians and operating engineers.

I find it particularly disturbing that repealing prevailing wage seems to have reduced the number of younger workers in apprenticeship programs. In 2016, there were over 5,400 active apprentices. By 2018, that number dropped to 4,400.

That’s 1,000 fewer people likely to earn a living wage with the kinds of benefits it takes to raise a family with a degree of economic stability — a real loss to many struggling communities.

Worse still is the decline in worker safety. On-the-job construction injuries increased by 26 percent since repeal, according to a study from Michael Kelsay, economics professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Frank Manzo, of the Midwest Economic Policy Institute. The study was commissioned by the Affiliated Construction Trades and the West Virginia State Building Trades Council.

According to the report, “Costs associated with worksite injuries and an overall decrease in worker productivity have offset any savings from lower labor costs, resulting in public school construction costs that are not statistically different since prevailing wage was repealed, even after adjusting for inflation.”

Then there’s the hit to local businesses. The shift from union to non-union contractors winning construction bids opens the door for a larger share of out-of-state firms “performing work on taxpayer-funded school projects, and taking their earnings back with them to their home states upon project completion.”

Any way you look at it, repealing our prevailing wage law was a bad deal for West Virginians. It’s time for the Legislature to undo the damage.

(This appeared as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Another day in hell

Starting on a positive note, kudos to WV Governor Earl Ray Tomblin for vetoing right to work for less legislation as well as the repeal of prevailing wage. He had this to say about that:

“Foremost, I dispute that West Virginia needs a right-to-work law. The issue of right to work has been discussed for a number of years, but I have never had a company cite right to work as a barrier to relocating to West Virginia. We do not lack prospects. Our issues are best addressed by improving our workforce and creating new development opportunities. Since becoming governor in 2010, West Virginia has welcomed more than $10 billion in new investments and expansion projects. I do not believe West Virginia needs a right-to-work law, a law that would lead to little if any economy growth and may lower the wages of West Virginia workers.” 

and

“Last year, I worked with the Legislature to create a compromise on prevailing wage to help local communities by exempting projects less than $500,000 and to improve our state’s prevailing wage calculation. These new rates have been in place for less than a year – we need to give this new methodology time to work. We don’t need to pass bills that lower the wages of West Virginia workers and do little, if anything, to stimulate our economy.”

Alas, the framers of WV's constitution screwed up and left things so that a simple majority is all that is needed to overturn a veto.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE BAD IDEA FACTORY, the WV House passed the misnamed Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It was nice to see this op-ed by WVU's David Fryson opposing this backlash of bigotry.

AS IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH, a coalition consisting of WV's ruling class and representative of the thriving pseudo-Christian Taliban are getting to work on gutting school science standards.

And why not--people have to be stupid to put up with this ****, right?

More of a tweet than a post (but think about it anyway)

Reckon things like this could have anything to do with things like this?

Hitting bottom would be nice

The climate at the WV legislature this year reminds me of the lyrics of a John Prine song:

"We're goin' down down down to the bottom of a hole in the ground/smoke em if you've got em."

At this point hitting bottom would be nice since it would mean things wouldn't get much worse.

I'm going to share several items from the Gazette-Mail that tell the story.

FIRST, there's this Statehouse Beat column of Phil Kabler that lays things out pretty well. See especially the part about the hypocrisy behind the Republican leadership's anti-labor moves and the bogus WVU study.

MEANWHILE, I just love it when well-fed and well-paid outsiders urge leaders to take food from the mouths of hungry people. I have a feeling the guy who wrote this hasn't missed too many meals. 

It's almost as good as when Koch brother-funded hacks urge the abolition of public broadcasting. My friend Scott Finn had this to say about that.

HOW DO YOU TOP ALL THAT? Maybe totally screwing up public education for good.

These are only a few more reasons behind my campaign to change the state motto to "you can't make this **** up."

A new low

The WV legislature hit a new low today, which is kind of an accomplishment these days. The Senate voted along party lines by a margin of one to support right to work for less. That was bad enough, but one Republican senator felt obliged to insult the working people who were watching the spectacle. Meanwhile, the House moved closer to abolishing the state's prevailing wage for construction workers working on public building projects.

On other fronts, this may be the last post for a while. WV is about to get hit hard by a winter storm if predictions are right. Around here, that usually means no phone, electricity, internet or water for several days.

Stay safe!

Get ready

Working families in West Virginia had better get ready to take some major hits--or, better, to get back to basics and stand up for themselves and each other. One hit coming is the likely push of the Republican led legislature to pass RTW (right to work for less). Another union busting move is a likely attempt to repeal prevailing wage for construction on public projects.

Next in line are teachers, police and other public employees, who are about to get hammered with "draconian" cuts to benefits. Republican leaders want to resist adding money to help with the program's deficit and are blaming the administrators of the program, charges which are refuted here.

In a word, or maybe two or three, depending on whether you count contractions, it's on.

WV in the news

It's been kind of a big news day for West Virginia. Here's my pick of what 's interesting:

FIRST, on the Don Blankenship trial, here's the latest.

SECOND, on the Republican-led effort to drive down wages in WV, read more here.

THIRD, for a look at images from the coalfields, click here.

FOURTH, for an interesting view from the Washington Post on the WV political climate, click here.

Hypocrisy, skulduggery and one to watch

Perhaps the Gentle Reader will recall the crocodile tears shed by political candidates who oozed with compassion for miners and were eager to fight against the alleged "war on coal."

(The winning state candidates who did this demonstrated their sincerity in the last legislative session by rolling back some coal mine safety measures despite the firm opposition of the United Mine Workers.)

Meanwhile, at the federal level, the only member of WV's congressional delegation to support a bill making it simpler for deserving miners to get black lung benefits is Joe Manchin. This would be another put up or shut up moment for people who apparently have little inclination to do either.

NOW SKULDUGGERY. Workforce WV just completed a survey mandated by the legislature last year to calculate prevailing wages for public construction projects. It looks like state legislative leaders really wanted to kill prevailing wage and drag down conditions for working people all along.

NOW ONE TO WATCH. I'm referring of course to the trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship.

Prevailing skullduggery

There's been some interesting news regarding WV's prevailing wage controversy. First, a claim by Berkeley County Superintendent Manny Arvon about how much the school system saved without prevailing wage turned out to be total BS.

This BS was uncritically parroted by a number of WV politicians and pundits. I wonder if any will fess up? On second thought I don't.

Meanwhile, more evidence has surfaced that fringe benefits were intended to be included in the new prevailing wage calculation, something Republicans have recently tried to deny.

All this may sound arcane, but it's really about good jobs for local workers.

SPEAKING OF BS, the Beckley Register-Herald calls it in this editorial about the Common Core, a recent WV political football. Methinks some state leaders are against it because the president is black. The Huntington Herald-Dispatch also ran a good editorial on the topic.

COAL WHODUNNIT? The butler didn't do it, but the market might have.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Are West Virginians overpaid? Some people seem to think so

This op-ed of mine on prevailing wage appeared in today's Gazette:

I remember a bumper sticker that said “Drive like hell — you’ll get there.” I can’t vouch for its theological veracity but I get the sentiment. More generally, if we head in certain directions, there is a danger of actually getting there.

One such place some state leaders seem intent on racing to is the bottom. And they just might succeed.

This represents something of a sea change. Once upon a time, West Virginia’s politicians, with varying degrees of sincerity, at least pretended to care about working people. They’d talk about how hard they were working to ensure that workers here could earn a decent living to support their families.

A new crop of leaders, some of whom are quite well off, seems to be haunted day and night by the nagging fear that our working families are living too high on the hog. And they’re on the case.

The target of the moment is people who work in construction, although it’s anybody’s guess as to who will be next.

Here’s the deal: government is a major procurer of construction projects for things like schools, roads, bridges, public buildings, etc. — things the so-called free market doesn’t provide on its own.

Beginning in the 1930s, state and federal legislators, many of whom were Republicans, took steps to ensure that the wages paid on these projects didn’t undermine the local standard of living by granting contracts to fly-by-night low-wage contractors who often performed shoddy work under unsafe conditions.

This involved surveying the local labor market to determine what typical compensation was for given types of skilled labor. The wages that “prevailed” in a given area for nonresidential construction work became the basis for prevailing wage laws.

Contrary to rumor, local prevailing wage laws don’t guarantee public works projects go exclusively to union or even local contractors. They do, however, help ensure a well-trained and productive labor force and contractors who compete on the basis of efficiency, productivity and quality.

There are several differences between government procurement practices and how things work in the private sector. First, the jobs often require differing degrees of skill and training. It’s one thing to have someone switch out the motor of your attic fan or put on a barn roof. It’s another to wire a school or build a bridge that hundreds of thousands of people will drive over. Construction workers in public sector projects typically undergo a thorough period of apprenticeship and training.

Skilled workers can indeed earn wages and benefits that seem pretty healthy … until you recall that public construction jobs generally are temporary and don’t last all year. Typical workers in the building trades may have work for 44 weeks per year or less. And when they don’t work, they don’t get paid.

Further, private consumers can weigh many factors when making purchasing decisions. Most readers, for example, probably don’t always buy the cheapest available food, live in the cheapest possible shelter, and dress their children as cheaply as possible unless they have to. Governments, however, generally are required to select the lowest bid.

If you remove or weaken prevailing wage standards, you put pressure on contractors to cut back on training programs, wages, health care, pensions and possibly safety.

According to Steve Lyons of the Wisconsin Contractor Coalition, an association of 450 private businesses in that state, this can set up all kinds of long-range problems. “As contractors reduce their training costs, apprenticeship training declines. As apprenticeship training declines, qualifications and productivity of the construction labor force declines.”

“Prevailing wage laws allow contractors to include long-run costs of creating and maintaining a skilled, experienced and safe construction labor force in their public bids, if the private sector in the area on similar projects is paying those long-run costs as well. Studies repeatedly prove that well-trained, safe and efficient construction workers provide value to taxpayers and do not raise public construction costs.”

We do know that West Virginia’s prevailing wage law hasn’t driven up the cost of construction on public projects. Our state compares favorably to non-prevailing wage states like Virginia and North Carolina on school construction costs and is well within the range of other mid-Atlantic states.

During the last legislative session, the new Republican majority first attempted to repeal the state’s prevailing wage law but eventually seemed to agree on compromise legislation that raised the threshold and changed the way wages were calculated. Last month, they were outraged with the way Workforce WV attempted to comply with the law, presumably because it didn’t guarantee enough of a pay cut.

The latest development is pretty unprecedented. Republican legislative leaders have subpoenaed Workforce WV to search for emails revealing the influence of “outside interest.” I’m pretty sure that these “outside interests,” if there are any, are actually West Virginians who may have communicated with a public agency. Sometimes you’ll have that in a democracy.

By contrast, model legislation to gut the prevailing wage came straight from the playbook of the ultimate outsider group, i.e. ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), a corporate-funded national effort to influence state policies in the interest of the very wealthy.

I find it baffling that in a state where too many families are struggling to make ends meet, some politicians are trying to drag people down instead of build them up. I don’t know how successful they will be in the short run, but such divisive policies aren’t likely to make for a happy future.

I’m reminded of a quote from the Book of Proverbs: “He that troubles his own house shall inherit the wind.”

Not my best effort

The latest Front Porch podcast from WV Public Broadcasting is about whether WV should retain its prevailing wage law, which sets basic job standards for public construction projects. This was one of those times when I felt so strongly about an issue that it was hard to talk about it.

Find it here.

Targeting workers and the poor

I was hoping that once WV's Republican-controlled legislature was out of session the attempted beatdown of working people would be on hold for a while. No such luck. Construction workers and local contractors once again have a bull's eye on their back with the state's prevailing wage law in jeopardy again.

Next up: drug testing welfare recipients.

OFF TOPIC, here's an interesting look at Appalachia's economic transition from a Kentucky perspective.

A little win for workers

During the last legislative session, the newish Republican majority severely weakened WV's prevailing wage law by raising the threshold for projects to which it applies. By way of background, prevailing wage laws ensure that contractors working on public projects pay decent wages to workers.

Anyhow, the Kanawha County Commission voted to continue to support its prevailing wage policies at the previous level (it's near the bottom of the linked article). That's a win, albeit a small one, for local contractors, local jobs, and local workers. I'll take any win I can get these days.

ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD. Here's another take on the Republican efforts to overhaul the state tax system. 

It's not all bad

There's a little more than a week to go in WV's legislative session and things are not great by any means but they aren't nearly as bad as they could have been. (Not counting snowstorms, freezing temperatures and floods.)

Some real howlers, like the bill that would ban local anti-discrimination ordinances, got smacked down pretty hard. A bill that would fine teachers for teaching inappropriate subjects didn't go anywhere.

Some other bad bills that died--or appear to have died at this point--are drug testing for TANF recipients, bringing back the death penalty, and right to work (for less).

Some really bad ones got a little better, like scaling back rather than repealing prevailing wage and a wide open campaign bill that threatened to open the floodgates to corporate money from anywhere.

The jury is still out on other issues, like water protection and access to courts for workers and survivors of those killed on the job.

There might even be a decent bill or two passed, like reforms to truancy laws and the juvenile justice system.

I have a pretty wise yoga teacher who once suggested that we use the following mantra as we observe what is happening outside and inside of ourselves: "It's like this now."

So, yeah, it's like this now.

Reasons why

On more than one occasion, I have expressed my desire to update the WV state motto from "Mountaineers are always free" to something that fits better these days.

I like the old one, but it seemed to apply more back in the days when WV broke with the slave owning aristocrats of Virginia to join the Union or when union miners and other workers fought hard against the abuses of corporations.

West Virginians seem to be a lot more servile, docile and domesticated these days.

As I've mentioned before, my choice for a new motto is "You can't make this **** up."

Here are a few reasons why: water, women, and workers. Oh yeah, and whack

Pity the poor billionaires

Apparently the billionaire Koch brothers don't have enough money in their pockets, so they want to take it out of the pockets of WV construction workers by killing WV's prevailing wage law.

Preserving WV's prevailing wage law

This op-ed on mine appeared in yesterday's Sunday Gazette Mail:

The new leaders of West Virginia’s Republican-controlled legislature have made jobs and economic prosperity a top priority. That being the case, I hope that some will reconsider support for a bill that would take money out of the pockets of the state’s working families and local businesses.

The issue in question is West Virginia’s prevailing wage law, which sets pay standards for workers on public construction projects. The idea is to prevent these projects from turning into a race to the bottom, with out-of-state contractors profiting at the public expense by underbidding local businesses and importing low-wage, low-skill workers laboring under unsafe conditions.

Maybe a little history might help. Many state prevailing wage laws were modeled on or influenced by the 1931 federal Davis-Bacon Act, which bears the name of two Republican senators, James J. Davis of Pennsylvania and Robert L. Bacon of Long Island, New York.

Neither was anything remotely resembling a labor radical. Bacon was a banker and decorated military officer who served in World War I, while Davis served in the cabinets of Republican Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover.

Bacon got on the case in 1927, when an Alabama contractor got a bid to build a veteran’s hospital in Long Island and imported poorly treated workers from that state. According to Bacon, these workers were “herded onto this job, they were housed in shacks, they were paid a very low wage, and . . . it seems to me that the federal government should not engage in construction work in any state and undermine the labor conditions and the labor wages paid in that state.”

He believed that a prevailing wage policy leveled the playing field:

“If the local contractor is successful in obtaining the bid, it means that local labor will be employed because that local contractor is going to continue in business in that community after the work is done. If an outside contractor gets the contract, and there is no discrimination against the honest contractor, it means that he will have to pay the prevailing wages, just like the local contractor.”

According to Davis, the least the government could do in such cases “is comply with the local standards of wages and labor prevailing in the locality where the building construction is to take place.”

Davis and Bacon believed their bill would help local workers and communities because wages on public projects wouldn’t be slashed by contractors who had to compete against those using cheap labor.

West Virginia’s prevailing wage law has been in place for decades and has promoted generally harmonious relations between contractors, construction workers, and building trades organizations. It has also encouraged the development of apprenticeship programs that help young people build skills for lifelong careers in a state where workforce participation is a critical issue. It has promoted high quality work, boosted productivity, reduced turnover, and promoted safety on the job.

Some of the most eloquent voices in favor of keeping the law in place are owners of construction firms. One CEO was recently quoted in the media as saying that “Loss of wage to our own people, and that wage going out of state, I just can’t understand how any legislator can explain that to his constituents.”

Opponents of the prevailing wage system basically want to reduce the wages of working people in a state where incomes are already among the lowest in the nation.

The Koch-brother supported Public Policy Foundation of West Virginia issued a report in 2009 that argued that prevailing wage laws artificially inflate wages for some workers. The study’s methodology has been characterized as flawed by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and others because it conflates data with construction wages in the home construction sector with those in the nonresidential sector.

Meanwhile, other studies, such as those by Michael Kelsey of the University of Missouri and the Keystone Research Center, compared states with and without prevailing wage laws. They concluded that West Virginia’s public construction costs are not out of line with other states and are under some without prevailing wage laws. They have also found numerous public benefits, such as those mentioned above.

I think it’s pretty simple. West Virginians win when our friends and neighbors earn a living wage with decent benefits and can provide for their children and families while building up our public infrastructure, paying taxes and contributing to our communities.

It’s great that legislative leaders want to put West Virginia back to work. I just hope we can find a way to build the state up without pulling our people down.

Three to get ready

Here's an interesting NY Times piece about how racial bias works, even when people aren't consciously aware of it.

While we're at it, it looks like WV's new Republican legislative majority wants to go after prevailing wages, i.e. lower wages for working West Virginians.  Here's a look at some of the misinformation behind that effort.

On the bright side, everything isn't bad in WV. Apparently, it's getting easier to catch 50 inch muskies in the state's rivers. Y'all can have my share of those.

What he said

The Gentle Reader may be aware that Republicans now comprise the majority in the West Virginia legislature for the first time since the elections of 1932. It looks like one of the top items on the agenda will be eliminating state prevailing wage rules, which will mean lowering pay for construction workers. 

In the comment section of a newspaper, a friend of mine had this to say about that.

This sounds like a great idea!

WV is the second poorest in the nation, second only to Mississippi.

If we can pass prevailing wage law in WV and lower salaries for construction workers who have such easy jobs anyway then maybe we can lower the average salary and be the #1 lowest wage state in the country.

After all, low wages for workers equals prosperity right?? I mean drive around WV. We work cheaper than any other state but MS. You see how many fine houses, new cars and beautiful towns we have!

Pass repeal of prevailing wage! Make us #1 for low wages and we'll all be living great!!

(Yes, that was irony.)

Let the race to the bottom begin. God knows we're already pretty close.

Finally, an important news story

I was a bit surprised today when surfing the web to find a news story on NPR about how to tell whether one's goats are happy. According to the report, goats are in these days, with global population increasing from 600 million to 900 million since 1990.

Apparently, someone has actually studied how to tell whether goats are happy or unhappy. With ours, it's pretty easy to tell, but I'm guessing there may be a big difference between goats as productive livestock and goats as spoiled lawn ornaments who think their humans are stupid waiters.

ON A MORE SOMBER NOTE, it looks like WV's new political majority is planning anti-labor legislation for the 2015 session. That's no surprise.