Issues

Prevailing wage laws ensure that all contractors bidding on public construction projects will pay family-supporting wages and that these projects will be built to the highest standards by skilled, safe, well-trained construction craftspeople.  

The main intent of this 1931 U.S. Federal Law (several states had similar legislation on the books beginning in 1891) was to prevent contractors and their employees from coming into an area, bidding on a job and undercutting local wages.  This practice had the effect of displacing local labor and having cheap unskilled labor take jobs away from people who live in the area.  The two Republican Congressmen Davis & Bacon who were sponsors of the Act felt it improper for tax dollars to be spent undercutting their constituents’ wages.

Today Right Wing forces argue that Davis–Bacon is too costly and try to cut provisions of the Act and often ask for it’s outright appeal.  They know that in areas of high unionization this would drastically reduce wage rates. 

Keeping Davis-Bacon intact has become an important political issue for The National Building Trades (NABTU) as well as all of their State affiliates like us The RI Building and Construction Trades Council. (RIBCTC)

Davis Bacon Act - 40 U.S.C. 3141-3148. The Act covers four main areas of construction: residential, heavy, buildings, and highway. Within these areas are further classifications, including craft positions such as plumber, carpenter, cement mason/concrete finisher, electrician, insulator, laborer, lather, painter, power equipment operator, roofer, sheet metal worker, truck driver, and welder. 

The Federal Davis-Bacon law sets a wage floor for federal construction projects that prevents government spending from undermining local wages and living standards. Thirty-two states including Rhode Island also have “Little Davis Bacon Acts” or state prevailing wage laws that apply to state-funded construction projects. 

The Davis Bacon Act often called the Prevailing Wage Act requires that each contract over $2,000 to which the United States or the District of Columbia is a party for the construction, alteration, or repair of public buildings or public works shall contain a clause setting forth the minimum wages to be paid…Under the provisions of the Act, contractors or their subcontractors are to pay workers employed directly upon the site of the work no less than the locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits paid on projects of a similar character. The Davis-Bacon Act directs the Secretary of Labor to determine such local prevailing wage rates.

The agency responsible for collecting and disseminating the prevailing wage data is the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor.  The procedure "involves four steps: (1) planning and scheduling of surveys, (2) conducting the surveys, (3) clarifying and analyzing the respondents' data and (4) issuing the wage determinations." 

In addition to the Davis-Bacon Act itself, Congress has added prevailing wage provisions to approximately 60 statutes that assist construction projects through grants, loans, loan guarantees, and insurance. These "related Acts" involve construction in such areas as transportation, housing, air and water pollution reduction, and health. If a construction project is funded or assisted under more than one Federal statute, the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage provisions may apply to the project if any of the applicable statutes requires it.

Collective bargaining is the process in which working people, through their unions, negotiate contracts with their employers to determine their terms of employment, including pay, benefits, hours, leave, job health and safety policies, ways to balance work and family, and more. Collective bargaining is a way to solve workplace problems. It is also the best means for raising wages in America. Indeed, through collective bargaining, working people in unions have higher wages, better benefits and safer workplaces.

In 1935, the National Labor Relations Act clarified bargaining rights and established collective bargaining as the “policy of the United States.” The right to collective bargaining also is recognized by international human rights conventions.

The freedom to form and join a union is core to the U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights and is an “enabling” right—a fundamental right that ensures the ability to protect other rights.

In recent years right wing attacks on collective bargaining rights find us once agin having to reassert the rights we as union members fought long and hard to make law. We work hard to make sure that our members and indeed all American workers know their rights and we help to preserve them through our political action, our community relationships and through educating our young men and women who will someday join the workforce.

Workplace Health & Safety

The health and safety of our members on the job is of paramount importance to the leadership of the RI Building and Construction Trades Council.  We work our signatory contractors, union sponsored health & safety Funds and initiatives and with state and federal agencies like the RI Department of Health and OSHA to exchange information and training procedures that help to mitigate accidents and injuries on the job.  We also work with our national umbrella union the North American Building Trades Union (NABTU) which covers the U.S. and Canada.

The North America’s Building Trades Unions is committed to the highest levels of safety in the construction industry, and through CPWR – the Center for Construction Research and Training, advances policies that reduce injuries, illnesses, and fatalities on the job site.  From it’s inception, CPWR began a series of cooperative agreements with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), part of the CDC. The agreements, based on a competitive application process, have focused on occupational safety and health in construction, with an eye to building a “safety culture” industry wide – safe and healthful working conditions along with lowered costs and improved industry productivity.

The effort is essential because of the excessive level of work-related injuries and deaths in construction, compared with other industries in the United States and with construction in some other industrial nations.

Again, we also lobby our state agencies and Congress when necessary to strengthen health and safety law as well.  We also remain vigilant against those political forces which try to water down health and safety laws as being too expensive for employers.  Research has found that keeping employees safe on the job reduces workplace accident and injury, leads to workers taking less time-off and assists in reducing turnover.  This costs the employer less in insurance premiums, time-out of work for employees, and lessens the cost of  employee turnover especially with regard to employee training and administrative costs.

Misclassification

Employee misclassification allows a company to undercut ethical contractors who are following the letter of the law. Misclassification is the practice of designating an employee as a "1099 worker," or an independent contractor, when, by law, that person should be compensated as an employee. Another way to misclassify employees is too designate an employ to a category that pays less than the rate they should be paid, according to their job specifications.

A misclassification can result in potentially significant civil penalties. Further, if the misclassification is determined to be intentional, the employer may face criminal prosecution.

Intentional misclassification may be done in an attempt to avoid payroll taxes, unemployment taxes and workers' compensation insurance. In the construction industry, this practice may also allow a company to submit lower bids for projects and undercut ethical contractors who are following the letter of the law.

The Building Trades and their partners at the Foundations for Fair Contracting identify contractors who they believe are skirting law especially on public projects that are covered under the Davis-Bacon Act.  We look into public records and then must contact the state or national D.O.L. to bring a case against that contractor.  We also lobby at the state and national level to update laws that pertain to misclassification and violations of Davis-Bacon in order to create a level playing field for our contractors  - employers that follow the law and fairly compensate their employees.

Education is another key component to stopping these practices as the unscrupulous contractor often targets underprivileged and/or undocumented communities as well as those who have a language barrier and entice them to work for slave wages. This often leads to accidents and injuries due to lack of training that these men and women feel they cannot report. They are often also not paid health care benefits and go untreated.