Bush: Suspend Wage Rules for Service Workers
Having suspended prevailing wage rules for construction work under the Davis-Bacon Act, the Bush brigade now wants to suspend rules requiring decent wages for service workers:
Labor Department and White House officials are examining a similar move for service workers covered by the McNamara-O'Hara Service Contract Act, which extended prevailing wage rules to service workers. Administration officials are concerned that workers on demolition and debris removal jobs could protest that even with construction wage supports lifted, they should be paid prevailing wages because their work is more service-related than construction-related.Here is where the administration desire to subcontract everything in sight hoists them on their own petard. Since support services will probably get distinct contracts from obvious construction efforts, they are stuck with a lot of employment that demands prevailing wages under the Service Contract Act.
But the Bush folks face a problem in suspending the Service Contract Act.
Davis-Bacon has a specific provision allowing the President to suspend it during a national emergency.
The Service Contract Act does not, and its suspension may be unprecedented, labor experts say.Given that the government may be running a whole range of support services for reconstruction efforts, if service workers are getting prevailing wages and the construction workers are not, you can expect hell to pay by those construction workers.
But the Bushies will be immediately in court if they suspend the Service Contract Act.
Do they really want a full-blown court case highlighting their attacks on decent wages, even as the working poor in Louisiana and Mississippi, led by groups like ACORN, are protesting their callousness?
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Nathan, this looks just like what they did after 9/11. Use a crisis and tragedy to enact a rightwing wish list. Is there no benefit to the people of the Gulf in any of these suspensions?
September 14, 2005 11:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is there no benefit to the people of the Gulf in any of these suspensions?
Not unless they also cap the "profits" of the contractors, which, I think we can all agree, ain't likely to happen.
September 14, 2005 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can someone explain the government public rationale for suspending these acts?
My understanding is that it affects rules and pay. Rules may be defendable for speed but reduced pay??
September 14, 2005 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Can someone explain the government public rationale for suspending these acts?"
Um, are you actually expecting a defensible rationale here? They are doing this to attack the "other side," of which Labor is a part. Don't underestimate Bubble Boy and Rove's capicity for spiteful actions.
There was no legitimate rationale for taking away civil service protections when the Dept Of Homeland was created. They did it to turn things around on the Democrats, who were pushing for the Dept's creation, and to stick an unexpected shiv into Labor.
September 14, 2005 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
KarenJG
We know that would be unAmerican.
September 14, 2005 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
They were also suspending civil service rules for the Homeland Security Department to make it a haven for political appointments. The criticisms of FEMA stem from political hacks being rewarded with decent white collar jobs they have no experience holding.
This was an undoing of over 100 years of effort to prevent partisan appointments in lower ranks of the government bureacracy and to reinstigate the spoils system. This is a return to wholesale job replacements whenever a new political team enters the White House.
DC Dems mounted no real effort to explain this to the anti-union media that characterized their opposition to the GOP changes as pure protectionalism to their union supporters.
Do you think people now might realize why you don't won't political hacks in charge of emergency management positions?
September 14, 2005 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lame - I did not say that I believe that they had a good defense. I just wonder how they chose to defend suspending Davis and the implications now that they are trying to do service workers too.
I'll keep my focus for now on Gulf Coast workers because they need all the income and workplace protections they deserve. (Given how nasty the environmental situation is)
September 14, 2005 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll take a crack at it, if I were to think like a capitalist I would say that by suspending Davis-Bacon allows a company to extend financial resources to hire more people to do work and in turn would allow a faster recovery. (Now I have to go puke on myself for saying such a thing). That is what I would think would be their justification, however inhumane and anti-labor that is, no company really puts their workers before their profiteering.
September 15, 2005 7:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
I spent about 10 years working in a Federal agency and have dealt with the occasional contract that was governed by the service contract act (SCA).
Basically how it works is that contractors who receive Federal contracts are required to obtain a wage determination from the Department of Labor (DOL),which specifies the prevailing wage for each job category covered by the contract. The prevailing wages are determined by job classification and region and are based on wage surveys conducted by the DOL unless the 51% of the jobs in that category are union and covered by a collective bargaining agreement in which case the union wage is by definition the prevailing wage. Contractors are bound by their contract to pay at least the prevailing wage but nothing in the SCA prevents them from paying more. So there is a little bit of extra bureaucracy involved but in an emergency setting it would certainly be possible for the DOL to streamline this wage determination process rather than throwing it out. For example, they could review wages after the fact if necessary so that work isn't delayed.
The basic purpose of these laws is to prevent contractors from forcing wages downwards in order to win bids. If all contractors are required to pay the same prevailing wages then they will need to achieve efficiencies elsewhere in order to be the low bidder. Service contracts unlike construction contracts, are predominantly for labor rather than goods. Two common examples would be janitorial services and landscaping. Basically the labor provided is the primary service. There's really no other good like a finished building that the government is buying. In these instances where labor is the primary good being contracted, the only real way that businesses have to compete and win bids in completive bidding is to drive down wages.
Without the SCA the end result is that the only contractors winning bids would be those that pay the absolute minimum wage, or the lowest wage possible that will still attract workers. The whole point of the SCA is to prevent the competitive bidding process from driving down wages. Throw it out and you'll have an escalating race to the bottom. Because in an environment of big contracts the employer can simply go to the employees and tell them that if they don't take a pay cut they all lose their jobs because they will lose the contract. That's the very thing that the SCA and Davis-Bacon are supposed to prevent.
But there's another point that is not mentioned here. Will these reconstruction contracts be sole-source or competitive bid contracts? If the government is going to follow the Iraq/Halliburton model of sole-source contracting then there is even less reason to abandon the SCA and Davis-Bacon. Because if they are sole-source contracting then they have obviously abandoned any argument in favor of cost containment. Sole-source contracts without wage requirements opens the door wide open for the worst sort of fraud and windfall profits for big contractors at the expense of labor and the federal budget. At least in a competitive bidding environment, if wages are driven downwards in order to win contracts then the taxpayer and federal treasury will come out ahead. But with sole-source contracting, the only thing that happens if you drive wages downwards is put more taxpayer dollars into the pockets of these giant contractors.
September 15, 2005 7:59 AM | Reply | Permalink