Repeal prevailing wage policies

By George C. Leef

After Hurricane Katrina ravaged much of the Gulf Coast, President Bush ordered the suspension of the federal Davis-Bacon Act.

This law mandates that workers on all federally financed construction projects of more than $2,000 (virtually all, that is) be paid the "prevailing wage" of the project location. The suspension would have covered only the parts of the coast devastated by the hurricane.

Big Labor and its leftist allies howled that this move would be "anti-worker" because it would lift their "wage protection." The howling worked: Bush in late October reinstated Davis-Bacon.

The truth, however, is that Davis-Bacon and all the state prevailing-wage laws are price-fixing schemes, enforced by government, designed to shield high-cost unionized workers against competition from more-efficient nonunion contractors.

By preventing more-efficient contractors from underbidding the union rates, prevailing-wage laws ensure that union workers will get most government construction work. A union electrician, for example, is thus able to work at the set union scale, which may actually be more than he often gets in the market, while the nonunion electrician cannot be employed at the rate he is willing to work for.

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