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Originally Posted by Mazer
From a link in that article:
Basically the Davis-Bacon Act requires government contractors to pay their employees wages similar to the ones that other employers in the reigion pay their employees, and those wages can be quite high depending on how unionized the local workforce is. Some contractors can't afford to pay those wages, so either they have to lay off some of their employees to get the contract, or else they just don't bid on it and hope they can find non-government funded projects to keep them busy. You can imagine that in a disaster zone like the one created by the hurricane that all the rebuilding jobs are being contracted by the feds.
Now, if a construction worker wants to find a job rebuilding his home town he can find a company that's willing to pay him prevailing wages, so obviously the act wasn't repealed for the benefit of employees. The president did this for small companies so they could get government contracts without hiring union labor. I'm not defending the president's decision here, but this is probably what he was thinking when he did it. |
sorry, didn't refresh and missed this.
Mazer i certainly can follow that reasoning, i just wonder if there are limits on how low even the smallest contractors will go. Most southern states don't have unionized anything - like where i live, it's a purely a right-to-work state.
In NJ (where i used to live) there were unions up the arse.
I can see the good and bad of both especially with the higher union wages up north.
According to this
Minimum Wage, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi among others, there is no minimum wage or it's well below the national average. So I guess in a way, if a contractor wants to pay $2-3 an hour using Mexican immigrants - they could and no questions would be asked. (and i am of no means slamming Mexicans or any other ethnic groups here).
I dunno, seeing any law repealed which serves to protect certain ideals (even ones such as Davis-Bacon) and nothing added to safeguard workers (minimum wage for instance) can't be entirely a good thing.
added: especially considering the incredible amount of destruction and equally incredible amount of $rebuilding$ capital that will be floating around.
Just thinking outloud here.