prevailing wage

In Kentucky, the inevitable fight for ideological control has begun with newly elected Republican Governor Matt Bevin at the helm. On Tuesday, the state legislature began its session with a bevy of political infighting as Democrats and Republicans battled for committee membership and leadership positions.

Wisconsin Republicans have reached an agreement which will allow them to pass a budget for 2015-2017 after a week of contentious infighting over prevailing wage reforms and funding for a new Milwaukee Bucks arena. The budget deal will still need to clear the Senate, where a group of conservatives are using their budget vote to push for prevailing wage repeal. Even as he announced the budget deal, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald acknowledged that the votes aren’t there in the Senate to pass it.

A new study titled The Cost of Repealing Michigan’s Prevailing Wage Policy provides new data about the law’s true impact on total construction costs and economic activity. As we wrote earlier this month, despite the incredibly strong voter support for the current prevailing wage law, the state GOP is pushing a repeal agenda. The new study shows that repeal would kill jobs and hamper the state’s economy.

Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan has preemptively weighed in on anti-union legislation that is being promoted by Gov. Bruce Rauner which would allow local governments to create “Right-to-Work” zones and ban prevailing wage requirements. Her position? Both are unconstitutional.

The Office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has announced that the owner and project manager of Staten Island contractor R3 Electrical Inc. must remit $274,000 in restitution to workers the company underpaid. The prevailing wage was supposed to apply to work done on two publicly funded projects in New York City, R3 did not meet this requirement.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has dropped the city’s legal challenge to a law that would require companies receiving more than $1 million in economic development aid to pay the prevailing wage. The legal challenge to the law began after the city council overrode Mayor Bloomberg’s veto of the law by a 44-4 vote in May of 2012. Following the override, Mayor Bloomberg sued the city council arguing that the legislation would increase city costs and was preempted by the state’s minimum wage law.

Legislation has passed the Delaware House of Representatives which would set prevailing wages based on negotiated collective bargaining agreements, thus eliminating the need for wage surveys. The bill, which passed the house on a 26-13 vote, will now be taken up by the Senate. Up to this point, support for and opposition to the bill have fallen along party lines:

The Escondido Democratic Club recently took some time to clear up misconceptions about the prevailing wage, a hot topic in local political conversations due to the city’s upcoming referendum on charterization. At the final public hearing on the issue, Escondido Mayor Sam Abed proudly admitted the he was “championing the proposal.” While supporters thinly veil their motives as an issue of “home rule,” honest participants know the prevailing wage to be the central legislative question.

A committee in the Democratic-majority Kentucky House of Representatives voted down Republican proposals to make Kentucky a right-to-work state and to exempt school construction projects from the state’s prevailing wage laws.

A major ruling in labor's favor: H-2b visas, those allowing foreign workers into the country to work, will now be regulated by the Labor Department's wage methodology. It layman's terms, it means that big business has to make sure there are no available American workers first, and they can't undercut those Americans' wages.