[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 72 (Tuesday, May 21, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5374-H5376]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2145

  If they were desperate for work all over the country, you can imagine 
that poor workers who were black, African-Americans in the South, or 
who happened to be of Hispanic origin in the West or Southwest, those 
were the workers who were most desperate. So these most desperate 
workers were being picked up in trucks and carted about all over the 
country. If you think the conditions for immigrants on farms are bad, 
you should take a look at the kinds of conditions these people had to 
live under.
  These people did not have open fields, at least, to compensate for 
some of their suffering, to relieve themselves of the kinds of horrors 
of being crowded into trucks. They could at least, if they were farm 
workers, get out and go for long walks and have the joys of 
countryside. But when they were carted into big cities, they were 
forced to sleep in cramped quarters, and they were just there, Davis-
Bacon utilized as chattel in the making of big profits by a few 
unscrupulous contractors, the people who never get enough.
  There are people who just never get enough. They do not want to make 
profits. They want to make a killing on every deal. They want to make 
the maximum on every job. They want to rob the Federal Government of 
every penny. They were not getting less from the government, they were 
paying workers less. They were increasing their profits by paying the 
workers less. They could bid a little lower on the job and undercut the 
local contractors because they were paying the workers, who were like 
chattel, semislaves. They were paying them so much less that they could 
undercut and win the job, and throw out of kilter the whole work force 
of a given area as a result of bringing in large numbers of desperate 
workers.
  Among those desperate workers, and they were not the majority, among 
those desperate workers were workers who were black, workers of African 
descent, so there is a grain of truth that in the case of Mr. Davis and 
Mr. Bacon, they were protecting local workers from outside workers. 
Some of those workers were black. So they have twisted that to mean 
Davis and Bacon were trying to preserve jobs for white construction 
workers against the needs of black workers, or to undercut the 
provision of jobs to black workers who were being brought in from all 
over the country under terrible conditions, and being forced to work 
for the very cheapest possible labor, in many cases just food and 
shelter.

[[Page H5375]]

  There is a grain of truth there, but that is all it is, a grain of 
truth. What has happened in the construction industry is that there has 
been a history of discrimination. It is one of those difficult 
industries for blacks to get into. African-Americans have had a long 
struggle with the construction industry, but Davis-Bacon has not made 
it worse. In fact, Davis-Bacon has made it better.
  The one instrument, the one weapon to fight discrimination that has 
been effective in the construction industry has been Davis-Bacon. Past 
and present history demonstrates that Davis-Bacon benefits minority 
workers by seeking to ensure the equal and fair treatment of all 
employees, and that regardless of race or color, each workers will be 
paid at least the locally prevailing wage.
  As Dr. John T. Dunlop, the former Secretary of Labor under a 
Republican President named Ford, Gerald Ford, Dr. Dunlop said, ``By 
protections flowing from the Davis-Bacon Act, in part, the lot of 
minorities has been approved dramatically.''
  Mr. Speaker, the Davis-Bacon Act requires that workers on federally 
funded construction projects be paid the wages and benefits that 
prevail in their communities. This requirement plays a critical role in 
bringing minorities into the middle class. Small and minority 
contractors have also been found to benefit from the Davis-Bacon Act.
  Smaller Federal construction jobs, because of the quality of the 
bidding opportunity provided by Davis-Bacon, serves as entry for small 
contractors into the construction industry. Small and minority 
contractors may compete with large contractors. Because of the control 
on the wages and because of the greater concentration of minority 
contractors in the ranks of these smaller contractors, the entry of 
minority contractors into the construction industry will be severely 
curtailed if the Davis-Bacon provisions are lifted from smaller Federal 
jobs.
  We will hurt a lot of small and minority contractors if we take away 
the Davis-Bacon Act protections, because the Davis-Bacon Act does keep 
wages at an even keel, and the small contractors know exactly what that 
is. They can make their bids. They will not be undercut by contractors 
who could be unscrupulous in their methods, and it stabilizes the 
situation so even the minority contractors benefit, let alone the 
minority construction workers.

  Even with the Davis-Bacon Act in place, exploitation of minority 
workers goes on today by dishonest contractors, the same kinds of 
contractors who caused Mr. Davis and Mr. Bacon to develop the Davis-
Bacon Act. They still exist. This is an issue that the repeal forces, 
the guerrilla attack forces of the Republican majority, have refused to 
address.
  As a matter of fact, the zeal of the Republican majority does more to 
honor fanaticism in this respect. As you know, in fighting guerrilla 
warfare in Vietnam or any other place in the world, fanatics are at a 
great advantage in guerrilla warfare. Fanaticism, of course, is part of 
what drives it. It make it very hard to defeat.
  We have some fanaticism at work here, people who refuse to see the 
facts and refuse to admit to the logic of the situation. Testimony 
submitted by a Department of Labor official to the Senate Subcommittee 
on Labor contains a vivid description of just how Davis-Bacon 
violations can have a particularly harsh effect on minority workers. I 
will quote from the testimony. I will cite the testimony.
  One Arkansas contractor, for example, was found owing $7,000 in back 
wages to employees. The payroll was falsified to show compliance. The 
employees were all black, in this case. This was a case where Davis-
Bacon existed, but the fact that the contractor was cheating and not 
complying with Davis-Bacon was to the distinct disadvantage of the 
workers who were minority, black. The employees were all black, and yet 
this is another example of how they can be exploited by an unscrupulous 
employer.
  In another case, many forms of cheating employees were used. The firm 
took the easy route of employing primarily undocumented workers. This 
is under a contract where they should have been following Davis-Bacon 
requirements. They employed undocumented workers. These workers will 
not complain, of course. They are on the spot. They are in a situation 
where they are guilty, so they would never expose what the contractors 
are doing. They present an ideal work force for those who would exploit 
labor in government jobs.
  This subcontract was for the fabrication, transportation, and 
installation of a bridge railing on a bridge across the Potomac River. 
The company employed undocumented workers at rates of $10 per day, plus 
food and lodging, for workdays of 7 to 10 hours daily, 60 and 7 days a 
week. It should be noted that this contractor was transporting many 
undocumented aliens from the south Texas area, where wage rates are 
lower, to the Washington, DC area, which pays prevailing higher rates. 
Here is another example where even today we have a situation which is 
as bad as the situation that Representative Bacon and Senator Davis 
were trying to combat in 1931.
  Violations continue to mount as corrupt and unethical contractors 
come on the scene and old contractors take more chances or become more 
inventive in their efforts to evade the requirements of the act. 
Outright falsification and concealment is still found in many cases.
  Let me just dispel yet another myth. That is the myth that Davis-
Bacon necessarily increases the cost of public construction, and that 
it is difficult to administer and is obsolete. What Davis-Bacon does is 
prevent unfair competition from low-wage, fly-by-night contractors. It 
provides essential protection of workers. It encourages higher quality 
of workmanship and saves dollars on Federal construction projects. 
Davis-Bacon has been a stabilizing influence upon the construction 
industry and has enjoyed strong bipartisan support. Even former 
President Ronald Reagan, the most revered of all Republicans, as I said 
before, said that he would not repeal Davis-Bacon.
  Mr. Speaker, additionally, it is important to note that while the 
Republican majority of the 104th Congress who have fought affirmative 
action, who are against set-asides, who have attacked voting rights, 
who have never done anything to try to combat discrimination, they are 
saying Davis-Bacon is racist; but on the other hand, many 
representatives of the African-American community have supported and 
are supporting Davis-Bacon because of its role in protecting minority 
workers.
  Norman Hill, the President of the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, has 
acknowledged the importance of Davis-Bacon: ``In preventing 
exploitation of minority construction workers, Davis-Bacon is very 
important.'' Moreover, leading organizations that represent minorities 
and women support Davis-Bacon: the NAACP, the National Women's 
Political Caucus, the Navajo Tribal Council, the Mexican-American Unity 
Council, and the National Alliance for Fair Contracting, which 
represents more than 21,000 construction contractors, have expressly 
endorsed the Davis-Bacon Act.

  If the protections of the Davis-Bacon Act were removed, many more 
minority workers would face exploitation. All construction workers, 
including minority workers, will be forced to accept lower wages at 
reduced or no benefits when working on Federal construction projects. 
To claim that reducing the wages and benefits of minority workers is 
somehow in their best interest is ludicrous, inane, and smacks of the 
worst kind of racism and paternalism.
  Those who are claiming that Davis-Bacon should be repealed and 
destroyed because it is racist are contemptuously misusing the race 
issue and the people protected by the Davis-Bacon, the minority workers 
protected by the Davis-Bacon Act.
  The misnomer is that Davis-Bacon and union coverage are equal is also 
not true. The charge that Davis-Bacon hampers union apprenticeship is 
nothing more than transparent ploys of the conservative Republican 
right. The conservative Republican right ignores the simple facts that 
Davis-Bacon protects all workers, regardless of whether they have 
affiliations to organized labor.
  Further, data from the Department of Labor's Bureau of Apprenticeship 
and Training Programs shows that minority participation in union 
apprenticeship programs is consistently higher than minority 
participation in nonunion programs. The same data reveals

[[Page H5376]]

that the drop-out rate of minorities from apprenticeship programs is 
much lower in union programs than it is in nonunion programs.
  Why am I talking about union programs? Because where Davis-Bacon does 
exit, always there are unions, and unions and management work together 
under Davis-Bacon programs to provide apprenticeship programs and 
training programs, and Davis-Bacon has thus become a weapon, an 
instrument, a tool for ending some of the historic discrimination in 
the construction industry.
  Historically, the construction industry has to face up to the fact 
that it has not been a wide open field for minorities. In fact, when I 
was a member of the Brooklyn Congress of Racial Equality, one of the 
biggest projects we had was a program to try to integrate a 
construction job in the building of the Downstate Medical Center. We 
had 800 people arrested in that process of integrating the construction 
force working on that huge medical complex at Downstate Medical Center. 
That was about 25 years ago.
  Apprenticeship programs and training programs of the kind that are 
now being offered under the combined efforts of the contractors, and 
the unions who are under the Davis-Bacon program did not exist then, 
and now, of course, they exist in great numbers.
  The protections provided by the Davis-Bacon Act, the wages and 
benefits, are especially important to minority employees. As former 
Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall has observed, ``The workers most often 
victimized by unscrupulous contracts are the minority workers, whether 
he or she is black, Hispanic, native American, or an undocumented 
worker, Davis-Bacon is an integral part of ensuring a decent life for 
the hardworking men and women of the construction industry.
  I think, without a doubt, we can note that the people who care about 
discrimination, people who care about being victimized by racism, 
people who have led the fight against discrimination in industry, even 
in the construction industry, are saying that Davis-Bacon is not the 
problem, Davis-Bacon is part of the solution.
  Let me just close by stating that we have numerous examples of the 
ways in which the Davis-Bacon Act has helped the situation with respect 
to employment of minorities. We have more than 21,000 contractors who 
are a strong voice in the construction industry, and they are urging 
that we support Davis-Bacon reform. H.R. 2472 and S. 1183 are both 
bills to reform Davis-Bacon and not to destroy the Davis-Bacon Act. 
Those two measures would be an ample substitute for the Republican 
majority's attempt to outright repeal Davis-Bacon.

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