[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 82 (Thursday, June 6, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5996-H6002]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    BENEFITS OF THE DAVIS-BACON ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Stearns). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60 
minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, on May 22 of this year, the Senate, the other 
body, heeding the voices of more than 21,000 construction contractors 
and millions of American workers throughout the Nation, voted to reject 
any plans to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act. By the overwhelming margin of 
99 to zero the Senate endorsed bipartisan reform to preserve Davis-
Bacon.
  I think that is very significant that the Senate, the other body in 
this Congress, has taken a strong stance in favor of reform, with the 
assumption that any law, any institution, any structure would benefit 
from reform. But the Senate is not following the lead of the House and 
demanding that there be a repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act.
  I think this is a vindication of the system that was set up by the 
Founding Fathers when they said that we needed two Houses, one which 
could accept, and the analogy was made of the saucer and the cup, the 
pouring of tea or coffee into a saucer to cool it off; and the other, 
of course, would generate the heat that is in the cup.
  I think the House of Representatives is a body where there is a great 
deal of heat and energy. We have 435 Members, after all. When you 
multiply even the minimal energy of one person by 435, you get a great 
deal of heat and energy.
  The heat and energy in this body sometimes spins out of control. We 
need the wisdom and the patience of the Senate to sometimes bring us 
back to reality. I want to congratulate the Members of the Senate, all 
99 Members who voted that Davis-Bacon should not be repealed, that the 
Davis-Bacon Act should be reformed.
  Mr. Speaker, I stand before this body, and today I would like to 
dispel the myth that the prevailing wage determination in the Davis-
Bacon Act is inflationary, and that it adds billions of dollars to the 
Federal budget.
  I have talked before about Davis-Bacon and racism. Davis-Bacon is not 
the source of racism. If there is racism in the construction industry, 
Davis-Bacon is certainly not generating or not nurturing it. Davis-
Bacon is the antidote. Davis-Bacon has done more to counteract the 
impact and the effects of racism than any other Federal law or local 
law on the books.
  It is through Davis-Bacon that we have maximum cooperation between 
unions and contractors, and through the maximum cooperation of unions 
and contractors that we have gotten the kind of training programs that 
have begun to slowly but surely and steadily increase the number of 
minority workers who are qualified in the various skill areas in the 
construction industry.
  Prevailing wage laws were enacted to maintain community wage 
standards. They were enacted to support local economic stability, and 
they were enacted to protect taxpayers from substandard labor on State 
and Federal projects. These laws set clear parameters to ensure that 
contractors bid on public projects on the basis of skill and 
efficiency, and not on how poorly they pay their workers.
  As I have stated before, Davis-Bacon was created by two Republicans. 
Both

[[Page H5997]]

Davis and Bacon were Republicans. Both Davis and Bacon were concerned 
primarily about the middle class. Both Davis and Bacon were concerned 
about families and communities. The Davis-Bacon Act, when it was 
created in the early 1930s, was there to help stabilize communities. It 
was there to guarantee that families are not destabilized, and families 
are not subjected to the kind of wild things that happen when you can 
transport workers from one area under substandard wages and pay them 
substandard wages and be able to have unscrupulous contractors bid on 
projects at very low levels, and take over the work of the local 
contractors, who are paying good wages to local workers who are part of 
a local community and stabilize that community.
  That was what we were trying to avoid in the early 1930s. Davis-Bacon 
continues to help to stabilize communities and to guarantee that the 
pool of construction workers, their skills, and their incomes will be 
there to help stabilize their families and their communities.

                              {time}  1815

  Unfortunately, the House Republicans, the Republican majority here in 
this House, is driven by antiunion hysteria, which I do not understand. 
There is some kind of contract with an unscrupulous group of 
contractors, I think, in the case of Davis-Bacon, because they will not 
let up.
  Certain House Members keep going and they refuse to recognize the 
facts. They come from areas that are certainly not paying very high 
wages. If you look at the Davis-Bacon wages of the areas that many of 
the Republican majority Members come from, you will find that they are 
very low wages and sometimes close to minimum wages. And they cannot 
really complain about Davis-Bacon driving up the cost of local 
construction. But the facts do not seem to matter. There is a kind of 
hysteria determined to reverse the fair and equitable standards that 
Davis-Bacon has established.
  They have worked themselves into a feeding frenzy, and they made 
absurd charges about Davis-Bacon. Davis-Bacon is racist. These charges 
are made by people who normally are not concerned with racism, but they 
use this as a charge to be able to belittle and denigrate Davis-Bacon. 
They also charge that contractors are forced by Davis-Bacon to pay 
inflated wages, and that this has been the result of what Davis-Bacon 
has accomplished.
  The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling], who is the chairman 
of our Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, appearing 
before the appropriations subcommittee on the Department of Labor, 
Health and Human Services earlier this year, stated that quote, quoting 
representative Gooding, the chairman of our committee: The 1931 Davis-
Bacon Act drives up construction costs for any Federal construction 
projects valued over $2,000 by requiring contractors to pay a 
government-determined wage rate.
  Chairman Goodling's remarks before the appropriations subcommittee is 
proof positive that Republicans are not ready to really listen to the 
facts and take responsibility for leading this body in a move to have 
labor and contractors, labor and management come together for the 
benefit of stabilizing communities and for the benefit of stabilizing 
workers whose families very much need this kind of stability.
  The actual wages of construction workers is going down. They are as 
much a part of the wage gap and the wage stagnation in America as any 
other set of workers. If you take away Davis-Bacon, many of them will 
be subjected to violent swings in the conditions that set their incomes 
and their salaries.
  The Republicans have put on a sneak attack and fright campaigns in 
the hope that the American people will buy into a conspiracy theory, a 
theory that Davis-Bacon is out there conspiring to drive up the costs 
by guaranteeing workers something that is unreal. Chairman Goodling 
suggested that there is some kind of institutionalized and entrenched 
collusion at the Department of Labor. And to quote him again, ``There 
appears to be a deliberate effort to manimpulatee data for political 
gain.'' There appears to be a deliberate effort to manipulate date for 
political gain.
  If you look at the Department of Labor and the history of the 
Department of Labor, if you examine the surveys that they do in 
determining prevailing wage rates, you will find that it is impossible 
to establish that there is any kind of collusion or any kind of 
conspiracy. In fact, there are many cases where the surveys done by the 
Department of Labor actually lower the wages of construction workers 
relative to the highest-paid workers in that particular area. I am 
going to talk about that in a few minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, we have a booklet here which shows the results of some 
of the surveys that are done. They show that often the construction 
workers are paid below the wages of the average salary for workers in 
similar kind of jobs in given localities.
  Further evidence of the dream world existence among the Republicans 
who are fighting Davis-Bacon is that many of them have bought into the 
party rhetoric that Davis-Bacon inflates wages. Again, this is our 
primary topic today, to look at the wages, look at what is really 
happening with Davis-Bacon wages. It comes as no surprise that many of 
the most vociferous foes of Davis-Bacon comes from States that have 
extremely low wage determinations which include no health or pension 
benefits. No only do we have in States like North Carolina very low 
wages paid to Davis-Bacon workers, workers who are covered by Davis-
Bacon on Federal construction jobs, but those workers, the same workers 
in those areas have no pension benefits, they have no health benefits.
  I was in a hearing this morning covered by the Employer-Employee 
Relations Subcommittee of the Economic and Educational Opportunities 
Committee, and the hearing was focused on pensions. They pointed out 
the fact that there are only a small percentage of Americans who are 
covered by pensions. Two-thirds of the people do not have pensions of 
any kind beyond Social Security. For more and more people, the coverage 
for people is going down. There are more and more people who are 
uncovered as the years go by. We had more people covered 20 years ago 
who had pensions and pension benefits than have it now.

  So there is a whole category of construction workers who not only 
have no health benefits; they have no pension benefits as well. These 
are the same people, the same people who want to criticize the Davis-
Bacon prevailing wages also are the people who fought against the 
minimum wage. Minimum wage at least establishes a floor. Unfortunately, 
in many areas the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage rate is close to the 
minimum wage rate.
  Minimum wage, as we have pointed out before, is too low. It is 
presently $4.25 an hour, and we voted a few weeks ago on the floor of 
this House to raise the minimum wage. And after we raise it, if we get 
the other House to pass the bill, after we raise it, it will go from 
$4.25 an hour over a 2-year period to $5.15 an hour. This is very low, 
but there are many Davis-Bacon workers, people who are covered by 
Davis-Bacon who are very close to this minimum wage.
  Mr. Speaker, how can $4.25 an hour with no benefits be called 
inflationary by any rational and thinking person? How much longer can 
he go? At those rates, no one can support a family. Surely none of my 
esteemed colleagues would want to maintain that you can live on $4.25 
an hour, working 40 hours a week every week of the year. Construction 
workers, as we know, do not work on a regular basis like other folks. 
They have very uneven working periods due to the weather and a number 
of other factors.
  So here we have a situation where the Republicans in the House, the 
Republican majority in the House is insisting that we must go ahead and 
do something radical again. We have a situation where extremism is the 
only answer to the problem. The Members of the Senate have looked at 
the problem, and they have said: We need to have some reform, and we 
are willing to go forward with reform.
  But they did not say we need to be radical and extreme, and we need 
to repeal Davis-Bacon. They started with that discussion. There were 
people in the Senate who were maintaining that we should repeal Davis-
Bacon.
  What happened on May 22, 1996, just a few weeks ago? They started 
with a

[[Page H5998]]

discussion of a repeal of Davis-Bacon. And then it was proposed by 
Senator Santorum that they once and for all for this session of 
Congress decide that we are either going to repeal or reform. He was in 
favor of reform.
  Senator Santorum, and I quote him, I quote him from an ad that 
appeared in Roll Call, and it is available for all who want to see it. 
Senator Santorum said, ``We have just voted, we just voted on whether 
to repeal Davis-Bacon. Many of us are not for repeal of that. We 
believe that there need to be reform of the Davis-Bacon law and that 
we, in fact, should assume that for the purposes of the budget we are 
going to be reforming Davis-Bacon. I think there is bipartisan support 
for reform of Davis-Bacon. I wanted the Senate to go on record for that 
reform measure.''
  That is what Rick Santorum, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said on 
May 22, 1996, as a result of the leadership taken by Senator Rick 
Santorum, formerly a Representative from this body, a Republican, as a 
result of the leadership that he took the Senate voted 99 to 0 for 
Davis-Bacon reform, not repeal, Davis-Bacon reform.
  The Senate voted for Davis-Bacon reform because they understand that 
Davis-Bacon should be kept alive and remain in force because it 
encourages the private sector to invest more than $400 million in vital 
training programs, $5.75 billion for privately funded health care, and 
$4.3 billion for privately funded pensions. The Senate understood that 
Davis-Bacon is not racist.
  In fact, national civil rights organizations and the Congressional 
Black Caucus strongly support Davis-Bacon because it provides training 
and employment opportunities for minorities through apprenticeship 
programs. Davis-Bacon does not mean union rates. Unfortunately, I do 
not think that is so great. I think we should have union rates because 
union rates are far closer to what reality is in terms of people 
needing a decent wage, because Davis-Bacon does not seek to solve that 
problem.
  Davis-Bacon was not designed to solve the problem of collective 
bargaining, just as Davis-Bacon has nothing to do with racism or civil 
rights. It was not designed for that purpose. It has, as a byproduct, 
produced a situation where you have contractors and unions willing to 
work together. Because Davis-Bacon helps to stabilize the industry, you 
have had great benefits flow for civil rights for the improvement of 
the opportunities for minorities to work in the construction industry. 
But that is not what it is about. Davis-Bacon is not for civil rights, 
not designed to correct the problem of racism.

  We need lots of measures to go to work on correcting problems of 
racism throughout our whole society, and certainly some problems within 
the construction area, but this is not what Davis-Bacon is designed to 
do.
  Mr. Speaker, Davis-Bacon was not designed to replace collective 
bargaining. Davis-Bacon does not mean union rates. Seventy-one percent 
of prevailing wage rates issued by the U.S. Department of Labor are 
nonunion rates. Eighty percent of the wage decisions issued by the 
Department of Labor contain a rate of $10 or under. Davis-Bacon does 
not set the wage rate; it reflects existing community standards.
  Mr. Speaker, I submit this statement of the Senate's vote, 99 to 0. 
It appeared in advertisement form in Roll Call.
  I submit the material for the Record.

       Why Did the Senate Just Vote 99-0 for Davis-Bacon Reform?

       On May 22, 1996, the United States Senate, heeding the 
     voices of more than 21,000 construction contractors and 
     millions of American workers throughout the nation, voted to 
     reject plans to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act. By the 
     overwhelming margin of 99-0, the Senate endorsed bipartisan 
     reform to preserve Davis-Bacon.
       The Senate voted for Davis-Bacon because:
       It encourages the private sector to invest more than $400 
     million in vital training programs, $5.75 billion for 
     privately funded health care and $4.3 billion for privately 
     funded pensions;
       Davis-Bacon is not racist. In fact, national civil rights 
     organizations and the Congressional Black Caucus strongly 
     support it because it provides training and employment 
     opportunities for minorities through apprenticeship programs;
       Davis-Bacon does not mean union rates: 71% of prevailing 
     wage rates issued by the U.S. Department of Labor are non-
     union rates. 80% of the wage decisions issued by the 
     Department of Labor contain a rate of $10 or under. Davis-
     Bacon doesn't set the wage rate, it reflects existing 
     community standards.
       Ultimately, the U.S. Senate rejected the scare tactics and 
     misinformation employed by Davis-Bacon's detractors:
       We just voted on whether to repeal Davis-Bacon. Many of us 
     are not for repeal of that. We believe that there needs to be 
     reform of the Davis-Bacon law and that we, in fact, should 
     assume that for the purposes of the budget. I think there is 
     bipartisan support for reform of Davis-Bacon. I wanted the 
     Senate to go on record for that reform measure--U.S. Senator 
     Rick Santorum (R-PA), Congressional Record, May 22, 1996.
       Stop the lies. Reform Davis-Bacon now. Pass H.R. 2472/S. 
     1183.

  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, there are efforts afoot, and part of this 
comes from the same committee, the committee I serve on, the Economic 
and Educational Opportunities Committee. It comes from a subcommittee I 
serve on, the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, an effort to 
promote a concept called the TEAM Act where they try to say that they 
want to take steps to give management and labor a chance to work more 
closely together, and they think we need to legislate this. Those of us 
who oppose the TEAM Act say that the legislation and the context of 
union-busting that is taking place in the country now is another form 
of intimidation, another form of ambush that can be set for workers and 
that we do not need a TEAM Act; what we need is more freedom to 
organize.
  We need new regulations, and perhaps a change in the law, not 
perhaps, but certainly a change in the law which would allow workers to 
organize more freely and without having to go through the tremendously 
long waiting period and the bureaucratic struggle they have to 
undertake now in order to organize, get a vote, and be recognized.
  The advantage at this point is on the side of management, and 
management has used that advantage in many ways. So, we oppose the TEAM 
Act.
  Mr. Speaker, here is another way to have management and labor work 
together without interfering with the collective bargaining process and 
without interfering with the union organizing process. The contractors 
in Davis-Bacon, those who are part of the process of building Federal 
buildings and have for years found the stability of the Davis-Bacon Act 
and the kind of environment that it creates to be good for business, 
not for higher profits necessarily, but for stability which gives them 
a workforce that has skills, a workforce that is stable and will be 
around, that allows them to treat their workers in some kind of humane 
way and give fringe benefits like health care and pensions. The Davis-
Bacon employers are very different from the non-Davis-Bacon employers.

                              {time}  1830

  The contractors who are against Davis-Bacon are the ones who are the 
most unscrupulous contractors seeking to maximize profits by exploiting 
workers. They want to take one group of workers in one part of the 
country at very low rates and move them to another part of the country, 
and capitalize on the fact that they are exploiting those workers.
  Usually those workers are not as skilled as the people who come up in 
a situation under Davis-Bacon, and they usually provide a whole series 
of problems. They generate a whole series of problems in construction. 
They do not do as good a job, they have many problems. We have some 
very substandard buildings that have been constructed and others that 
have to be corrected. There are problems when you have workers who are 
working at the very lowest wages, workers who do not have health care 
benefits and workers who cannot look forward to a stable long-term job 
and any pension benefits.
  So, we have instead, a situation where contractors, employers, 
management, have taken the initiative to put forward the best possible 
condition for workers. Workers, on the other hand, have responded and 
they have in many cases made alliances to the benefit of the total 
community. It is the total community that Davis-Bacon is concerned 
with, and it is not inappropriate for the Federal Government to be 
concerned about the total community.

  When it goes to build a building, building a building or constructing 
any project within a community or a locale is not the only thing the 
Federal Government should be concerned about.

[[Page H5999]]

The Federal Government has to be concerned about what it does to that 
community and what the response is in terms of the labor market and the 
total environment of that community.
  This is not anything unusual. We have a defense budget which has been 
slowed down. We have not dealt with closing bases in a helter-skelter 
manner. Closing bases has been a slow process. We appointed a 
commission. We have taken every precaution to make certain that the 
closing of bases, which are military bases, be done in ways which do 
not injure communities, be done in ways which minimize the dislocation 
of workers.
  So the Federal Government is in the business of defending the 
country. Military bases are constructed as part of a process to 
contribute toward the defense of the country, but the Federal 
Government does not ignore what our military posture and our military 
changes with respect to bases or the movement of any facility does to 
communities.
  Why should it be any different in the construction of large Federal 
projects, whether you are constructing highways, bridges, or you are 
constructing buildings? Why should it be different? Why should the 
Federal Government not try to maximize the impact on that community?
  I congratulate Senator Santorum because he comes from Pennsylvania. 
Davis came from New York, Bacon from Pennsylvania, vice versa. I do not 
remember, but one of them is from Pennsylvania, one is from New York. 
It is altogether fitting and proper that a Pennsylvania Senator should 
take the initiative at this time and provide some light on the subject 
for his fellow colleagues in the Senate.
  Let me just talk a bit about the Contractors Coalition for Davis-
Bacon and some of the statements that they have made. These are 
businesspeople. I do not think the Republican majority wants to be in a 
position of turning its back on small businesses or large businesses. 
They are the ones who say that the future of the country is certainly 
tied up with what happens in the private sector.
  I do not exactly agree that the private sector can make magic, but I 
think a partnership between the private sector and the public sector is 
very much in order, and in Davis-Bacon you have a great partnership 
between the Government and the private sector, between management and 
labor, and that is what some of these contractors are talking about. I 
want to just quote from a few of them.
  Thomas H. Parkinson, president of the Burris Construction Co., Mount 
Laurel, NJ:

       The Davis-Bacon Act insures that we are bidding on a basis 
     that will allow the use of skilled labor. To think that 
     merely reducing the cost of labor will provide a cheaper 
     product is ludicrous.

  Matthew Card, president of KEC Engineering, Corona, CA:

       Davis-Bacon provides added value to virtually every facet 
     of our lives, from the superior quality of our public 
     improvements to a more stable productive society that has the 
     ability to contribute constructively to the future of our 
     great country. Fair wages are a requirement to attract 
     high quality people to provide high quality construction 
     products. One only has to look outside our borders to see 
     the destabilizing and potentially dangerous effects of 
     widespread low wages and poverty.

  Ronald J. Becht, executive director of the Northern California 
Drywall Association based in Saratoga, CA:

       As you know, the Davis-Bacon Act does not specify union or 
     nonunion nor should it; it does, however, establish a minimum 
     wage to be paid all workers which enables those contractors 
     who have made the commitment to pay for worker training and 
     who are able to retain their work force by paying a higher 
     wage, to at least compete with those who are not willing to 
     fund the future of their industry. Elimination of the Davis-
     Bacon Act which stabilizes wages would only serve to 
     exacerbate the current problem of skill shortages in the 
     construction industry. Since the public entity is required to 
     award to the low bidder, low wages would be further depressed 
     by unscrupulous contractors in a mad scramble to underbid 
     each other in order to win public contracts--to the detriment 
     of all.

  Troy T. Comer, Jr., executive vice president, Associated General 
Contractors of Indiana:

       This is going to be a tough issue for the Congress to 
     address, because there is a lot of misleading and incorrect 
     information floating around which would give the impression 
     that repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act would save the taxpayers 
     heaps of dollars. We disagree. Quality of construction and 
     the taxpayers are well served with the Davis-Bacon Act.

  Judith L. Striebinger, president of Eastern Steel Constructors, Inc., 
Fallston, MD:

       To think that not maintaining a standard for wages and 
     benefits will, in any way, be an asset can only be mentally 
     developed by people who are outsiders looking in and not 
     aware of the complexities of the industry.
       Experience increasing difficulty in executing projects 
     leading to higher cost and extended construction schedules at 
     a time when our industry is under severe cost pressure.

  That is a quote from W. Douglas Ford, executive vice president of 
Amoco Corp., in the BNA Construction Labor Report on November 22, 1995.
  I quote from Robert Gasperow, executive director, Labor Research 
Council:

       Attracting qualified young workers has to be the biggest 
     long-term problem the industry has. It is possible that the 
     industry has sufficient numbers of workers but their quality 
     is not good enough.

  And the final quote from Matthew Brown, Associated Press, in the Salt 
Lake Tribune:

       Beyond the upbeat statistics for soaring construction 
     employment and a doubling in the value of commercial 
     construction over the past 3 years is a desperate campaign to 
     find workers with enough skills to get the job done.

  We have a problem in the quality of work that is being produced by 
the fact that too many unscrupulous contractors are already at work in 
the construction industry and seeking to now destroy Davis-Bacon 
protection.
  Mr. Speaker, I submit in its entirety a statement called Contractors' 
Coalition for Davis-Bacon--Reform Yes, Repeal No.

   Contractors' Coalition for Davis-Bacon ``Reform--Yes, Repeal--No''

       Here's what some of our contractors have to say about the 
     Davis-Bacon Act:
       Thomas H. Parkinson, President, Burris Construction, Mount 
     Laurel, NJ: ``The Davis-Bacon Act insures that we are bidding 
     on a basis that will allow the use of skilled labor. To think 
     that merely reducing the cost of labor will provide a cheaper 
     product is ludicrous.''
       Matthew Card, President, KEC Engineering, Corona, CA: 
     ``Davis-Bacon provides added value to virtually every facet 
     of our lives, from the superior quality of our public 
     improvements to a more stable productive society that has the 
     ability to contribute constructively to the future of our 
     great country. Fair wages are a requirement to attract high 
     quality people to provide high quality construction products. 
     One only has to look outside our borders to see the 
     destabilizing and potentially dangerous effects of widespread 
     low wages and poverty.''
       Ronald J. Becht, Exec. Director, Northern CA Drywall 
     Contractors Association, Saratoga, CA: ``As you know, the 
     Davis-Bacon Act does not specify union or non-union nor 
     should it; it does, however, establish a minimum wage to be 
     paid all workers which enables those contractors who have 
     made the commitment to pay for worker training and who are 
     able to retain their workforce by paying a higher wage, to at 
     least compete with those who are not willing to fund the 
     future of their industry. Elimination of the Davis-Bacon Act 
     which stabilizes wages would only serve to exacerbate the 
     current problem of skill shortages in the construction 
     industry. Since the public entity is required to award to the 
     low bidder, low wages would be further depressed by 
     unscrupulous contractors in a mad scramble to underbid each 
     other in order to win public contracts--to the detriment of 
     all.''
       Troy T. Comer, Jr., Exec. Vice President, Associated 
     General Contractors of Indiana, Inc.: ``This is going to be a 
     tough issue for the Congress to address, because there is a 
     lot of misleading and incorrect information floating around 
     which would give the impression that repeal of the Davis-
     Bacon Act would save the taxpayers heaps of dollars. We 
     disagree. Quality of construction and the bottom line are 
     what really count, and we think the taxpayers are well served 
     with the Davis-Bacon Act.
       Judity L. Striebinger, President, Eastern Steel 
     Constructors, Inc. Fallston, MD: ``To think that not 
     maintaining a standard for wages and benefits will, in any 
     way, be an asset can only be mentally developed by people who 
     are outsiders looking in and not aware of the complexities of 
     the industry.''
       John D. Porada, Exec. Director, Associated General 
     Contractors of OH, Cleveland Div., Cleveland, OH: ``The 
     construction industry is a highly competitive and high risk 
     business that must attract the most productive workforce in 
     the quest to be the lowest responsible bidder. Joint labor/
     management apprenticeship training programs provide the 
     resources needed to train workers and is primarily self 
     sufficient without the need for major financial assistance 
     coming from the government. Repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act 
     could have a very negative impact on the continuance of this 
     type of joint apprenticeship training programs.''

[[Page H6000]]

       Dominick J. Graziano, President, Dominion Construction 
     Services, Inc., New Kensington, PA: ``We have had no problem 
     complying with the intent of the Davis-Bacon Act and wish to 
     add that it has in turn guaranteed those municipal or 
     governmental bodies a higher degree of quality and conformity 
     with the design intent by eliminating just anybody who wished 
     to call himself a contractor. It has functioned as part of a 
     base to provide experienced contracting and insure that all 
     contractors bidding on prevailing wage projects bid in an air 
     of equal and fair process with respect to such expenditures 
     of public revenue.''
       Kimberly Igo, President, Kim Con Inc. Sarver, PA: 
     ``Repealing Davis-Bacon would destroy the equal bidding 
     process and would cause the loss of many skilled tradesmen 
     which I have access to with a mere phone call. This would 
     also hurt the families of the people who put Congress members 
     in office. Like you, they too deserve a fair wage.''
       John Busse, Chairman, Master Builders' Association of 
     Western PA, Pittsburgh, PA: ``The absence of the prevailing 
     wage will force employers to drive down wages to the lowest 
     possible level in order to compete for federal construction 
     projects. Further, repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act will 
     negatively impact training, health insurance, pensions, 
     federal and state taxes, social security and local 
     economics.''
       Ned W. Bechthold, President, Payne & Dolan, Inc., Waukesha, 
     WI: ``Welfare reform must be accompanied by an atmosphere 
     that will allow minorities and others to work in our central 
     cities at rates of pay that will permit them to raise 
     families. Davis-Bacon accomplishes this.''
       Francis X. McArdle, The General Contractors Association of 
     New York, Inc. ``Our heavy construction contractors survive 
     and thrive on the effectiveness of their workforce, not on 
     the shine of the equipment. The best assets leave each day at 
     the end of the shift. Those assets are most productive when 
     they are paid enough to work without family worries and are 
     able to contribute to their communities.''
                                                                    ____

       ``Experience increasing difficulty in executing projects 
     leading to higher cost and extended construction schedules at 
     a time when our industry is under severe cost pressure.''--W. 
     Douglas Ford, Executive Vice President, Amoco Corp., BNA 
     Construction Labor, Report, November 22, 1995.
       ``Attracting qualified young workers has to be the biggest 
     long-term problem the industry has. It is possible that the 
     industry has sufficient numbers of workers but their quality 
     is not good enough.''--Robert Gasperow, Executive Director, 
     Labor Research Council, BNA Construction Labor Report, 
     October 18, 1995.
       ``Beyond the upbeat statistics for soaring construction 
     employment and a doubling in the value of commercial 
     construction over the past three years is a desperate 
     campaign to find workers with enough skills to get the job 
     done.''--Matthew Brown, Associated Press, The Salt Lake 
     Tribune, July 8, 1995.

  Mr. Speaker, I am saying that we have no small item here on the 
agenda. Certainly the Democrats on the Committee on Work Force 
Protections are battling an onslaught, an assault against working 
families that is being waged across the board. As I have said before, 
they have attacked the Fair Labor Standards Act, they have attacked 
OSHA which provides protection for workers including construction 
workers. They have attacked the right to organize by drastically 
proposing to cut the budget of the National Labor Relations Board and 
there is legislation to curb the powers of the National Labor Relations 
Board. As I have previously stated, we were caught by surprise by this 
onslaught against working people. The Contract With America did not say 
anything about trying to make the workplace of Americans less safe. 
OSHA was not mentioned in the Contract With America. So we were caught 
by surprise. It was a sneak attack on working people, a sneak attack on 
people out there who go to work every day and deserve to have safe 
places to work, a sneak attack on people who do not deserve to have the 
Fair Labor Standards Act tampered with.
  They are proposing now to get overtime. They want the overtime of 
workers to be captured by management, by employers. Instead of paying 
overtime, they are proposing to extend the provisions in law which 
provide for compensatory time, compensatory time which is very 
difficult to control and to enforce without it being to the advantage 
of the employers and the management at the expense of the workers.
  What does all this have to do with my district, the 11th 
Congressional District in Brooklyn? What does it have to do with the 
large percentage of people out there who are unemployed? We have had 
unemployment at the level of 20 percent for adults and close to 30 
percent for young adults for a long, long time. One of the areas that I 
get the most complaints about is men who want to work, so they would 
like to have more work to do and they would also like to work on 
contracts which have Federal funds involved. We have quite a number in 
New York City of projects that involve Federal funds, the projects 
which are related to transportation, projects which are related to 
government buildings. There are a number of areas where young men, 
healthy men want to get jobs.
  What we find often in the streets of New York and on various 
federally related projects in New York is you find people who are 
complete strangers from the outside, even with Davis-Bacon in force, 
they are getting through and disrupting the labor supply at the local 
level. Our men in Bronxville and our men in Bedford-Stuyvesant and our 
men in East New York and our men in East Flatbush who want to work on 
the construction industry--I should stop saying men because there are 
women now who also work on these jobs--are finding that they have 
people from the outside who are working for the companies who have come 
in and bid it on a low basis, even with all the constraints and the 
oversight of the controller's office. In New York City, it is the 
office of the controller that oversees prevailing wages. I am told that 
they do a pretty good job of that, but even then there are large 
numbers of contractors who are not local contractors who come in and 
take advantage of government work because of the fact that they are 
able to maneuver around some of these prevailing wage laws.

  There have been some scandals recently and they have fined many 
contractors for violating Davis-Bacon. The last thing we want to do is 
have a situation where Davis-Bacon is not there as a control on the 
contractors who bring in outside workers. This thing can go to 
worldwide levels. It is not exaggerating to say that if you do not heed 
the lesson of Davis and Bacon, two Republicans, who in the 1930's saw a 
problem with Government contracts being let to people who could come 
from any part of the country and use cheap labor from one part of the 
country to undercut the wages in another part of the country, if you do 
not heed that wisdom, you may have the situation where under NAFTA and 
under GATT, they will be coming from outside the country.
  Eventually NAFTA and GATT will bring down all the walls and you will 
have contractors who can come from any part of the world and bid on 
contracts in any areas of the United States. You have an advantage 
going to those contractors. You can have Japanese contractors who 
operate out of Mexico. They have the skills and whatever it takes to 
put together the proposals and to come in at low cost but they will use 
workers that come across the border from Mexico. Or you would have 
workers who are transported in from Bangladesh. There is a certain 
percentage of people in every job that could come from outside 
according to the way the GATT and the NAFTA laws work. So it could go 
to ridiculous proportions if you just take away all of the kind of 
protections that are provided by the Davis-Bacon Act. This thing could 
keep going.
  Prevailing wage is a sound concept. Prevailing wage probably is more 
sophisticated than the minimum wage. The minimum wage applies across 
the country assuming that economic conditions are the same in all parts 
of the country. The minimum wage does not take into consideration that 
there is a higher standard of living, the cost of living is higher in 
one part of the country than it is in another. Davis-Bacon does that. 
Davis-Bacon does not try to disrupt one community and bring it down to 
the level of the lowest common denominator in America. If you did not 
have Davis-Bacon, then all construction workers would be making these 
fantastically low salaries that are paid in places like North Carolina.
  let us just take North Carolina as an example. I have a book here 
which has prevailing wages all across the country in various places, 
from Abilene, TX, all the way to New York City.

                              {time}  1845

  And you would be surprised at what it shows in terms of the 
comparison between the wages that Davis-Bacon workers make and the 
average pay for all workers. In many instances the pay of workers under 
Davis-Bacon is far lower than the average.

[[Page H6001]]

  I wonder how the Labor Department computes these prevailing wages, 
because generally they come under the average worker's wages in these 
areas. Any Member of Congress who would like for me to give them a 
rundown on their area, I would be happy to do it. We can tell them what 
is happening with respect to Davis-Bacon rates and we can bring some 
light onto the situation.
  The heat, the energy of the House is out of control, and the Senate 
has showed it wants to bring light into the situation. I think the 
House should make an effort to try to bring some light into the 
situation.
  Let us take a look not just at North Carolina but the 10th 
Congressional District in North Carolina. Representative Cass 
Ballenger, my colleague who heads the Subcommittee on Work Force 
Protection. Representative Ballenger probably does not know that 
boilermakers in this area, who work for no fringe benefits, and 
boilermaker is one of the highest skills, I started at the top, a 
boilermaker's hourly wage is $16.20. They are highly skilled people. 
The fringe benefits for them, they do have some fringe benefits, they 
amount to about $4.10 an hour. Add it together and the average annual 
salary for a boilermaker in the 10th Congressional District is as high 
as $22,680. That is as high as you get.
  Let us take the other extreme and take a look at the laborers in the 
10th Congressional District of North Carolina and we find that they 
make $4.41 an hour. The laborers. And they have no fringe benefits. No 
health care, no pension. And their annual pay comes out to $6,174.
  These annual pays are computed on the basis of 1,400 hours for the 
construction industry employees, and we can see that in North Carolina, 
in the 10th District, all the categories except one, boilermaker of one 
level and boilermaker of another, they are the royalty, all the other 
categories are lower.
  Boilermaker, as I said before, makes $16.20. Another boilermaker 
classification makes $12.96 per hour. And then you get to electricians. 
Very skilled people, $10.26 an hour, and no fringe benefits. The 
average annual salary of an electrician in the 10th Congressional 
District in North Carolina is $14,364.
  Now, I am using statistics that come from the survey done by the 
Labor Department and these compilations done by the National Alliance 
for Fair Contracting. They have compiled this, but it is based on the 
survey done by the Department of Labor.
  A plumber makes $7.42 an hour, no fringe benefits. Average salary of 
a plumber under Davis-Bacon, $10,388 in the 10th Congressional District 
of North Carolina. Now, plumbers in New York would go, wow. Plumbers in 
most of our large cities would go berserk if you tried to offer them 
$7.42 an hour.
  Cement mason in the 10th Congressional District of North Carolina, 
$6.11. Carpenter, $6.63. Truck driver, $4.67. Millwright, $5.27 an 
hour. I told you the laborer is the very lowest, $4.41 an hour. As 
anyone can see, $4.41 is slightly above the minimum wage of $4.25 an 
hour. Pavement roller operator, $4.98 an hour. And we think those guys 
have good jobs, good paying jobs, but even under Davis-Bacon, when 
Government funds are involved, these are the salaries, these are the 
hourly wages.
  Asphalt raker, I just said $4.93 an hour. All these people have no 
fringe benefits, the last ones I have read. Only two categories have 
any fringe benefits. The bulldozer operators. We always think of 
bulldozers, they are symbolic of what construction contractors outside 
do on the highways in preparing for new buildings, when they are 
building the cellars. A bulldozer operator has a kind of prestige in 
the minds of kids and a lot of other people as being standard for 
working class America's very best.

  In North Carolina bulldozer operators make $5.96 an hour and no 
fringe benefits. That comes out the $8,344 per year, less than the 
minimum wage of a person who works on a steady job all year long, 
because construction work is based on 1,400 hours for construction 
industry employees.
  So here we have a situation in the district of the chairman of the 
Subcommittee on Work Force Protection, the committee in the House that 
is leading the fight to destroy Davis-Bacon, and the workers there are 
only slightly above minimum wage in most categories, and in categories 
which require considerable skills they are working at jobs that do not 
have any fringe benefits and are generally very low paying.
  We can take examples right across the country and find the same kind 
of problem. Let us take a few examples, If we go to Abilene, TX, what 
is surprising is that in Abilene, TX, a place like that, we have the 
average pay for all workers, people who work for a living and work for 
hourly wages, their averages pay is $20,000 a year for all workers.
  All of the Davis-Bacon construction worker are below what other 
workers are making. This is annual income. Annual income is $20,000 for 
the average worker, the average worker's pay. an electrician makes 
$14,000. Electrician. Backhoe operator, $13,000. Iron worker, $12,000. 
Carpenter, $11,000. and laborer, $8,552. These are wages that are under 
the wages that other workers are making in the same area.
  Prevailing wage has really not given them any kind of advantage. 
Prevailing wage is not designed to do that, unfortunately. I wish it 
were. Prevailing wage is just what it says; it is based on the 
prevailing wage. I wonder and I question why it always seems to be that 
the prevailing wage falls in so many instances under the average wages 
being paid in a given locale.
  Let us take another example. Gainesville, FL. In Gainesville, FL, the 
average pay for all working people who work on hourly wage jobs is 
$21,300 per year. The closest you get to that is the electrician under 
Davis-Bacon, $10,800 a year. Now, we do not have to be mathematical 
geniuses to see we are talking about a little more than half, a little 
more than half of what the average worker makes in Gainesville.
  We are not comparing Gainesville to New York or Chicago; we are 
comparing the Gainesville workers in other categories, the average 
worker level, $21,300 under Davis-Bacon, an electrician $10,800, a 
cement mason, $9,800, carpenter $9,109, iron worker, $8,355, backhoe 
operator, $6,000, laborer, $6,000. In Gainesville, FL, Davis-Bacon 
really does not help workers to rise above or even match the local 
level.
  Let us go back to North Carolina. Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High 
Point, NC, in the same area, same survey applies to them all. If you 
average the pay of the workers in Greensboro, NC, you come out with an 
average annual salary of $23,000. The average annual salary for all 
wage earners, all workers, is $23,000.
  The best you can do in terms of coming close to that under Davis-
Bacon is a boilermaker who makes $12,000, an electrician, $11,600, an 
iron worker, $10,274, a bricklayer, $10,118, a painter $9,421, 
carpenter, $9,000, backhoe operator $8,682, cement mason, $6,267.

  Is Davis-Bacon enriching workers at the expense of the American 
taxpayers? What we hear on ABC's ``20/20'' is a distortion. ABC's ``20/
20'' had a documentary piece on Davis-Bacon which did not make any 
pretense of being objective. If ever there was a contracted piece 
seeking to discredit a program that has been in existence since 1931, 
it was the piece that ran on ``20/20'', which described Davis-Bacon as 
being a swindle of the taxpayer.
  They gave none of the facts about how the survey was done to 
determine what the prevailing wage is. They gave none of the facts 
about how the salaries of the workers that they depicted in Chicago 
compared to other construction workers. They distorted the situation 
and made it appear that Davis-Bacon was responsible for the fact that 
so many of the workers were white versus the workers who were 
unemployed in the same area who were black, as if Davis-Bacon was 
designed to solve the race problem. It is not.
  They did not talk about a program which relates to Davis-Bacon called 
the service contract, based on the same principle. Federal workers who 
are service workers, also governed by the prevailing wage law, called 
the service contract law, and that does have large numbers of 
minorities, blacks and other people, who are covered by that provision.
  But the real point here is not to relate to who is covered, 
minorities, mainstream, et cetera. I dealt with that before, and I 
would like to focus here on the astounding fact that Davis-Bacon 
workers do not get close to the average pay of other workers in the

[[Page H6002]]

same area. Inflation is not caused by Davis-Bacon workers.
  Jacksonville, FL: Average pay for all workers, $24,000 dollars; 
average pay for working people, wage earners, $24,000. The closest you 
get to that in Davis-Bacon is the iron workers in Jacksonville, FL. 
They make $15,000 average, $15,200. And the backhoe operators, way down 
to $10,000, carpenter, $9,951, and the laborer down to $7,000.
  I can find it for any Member who would like to know the facts. As I 
said before, the Senate has spoken. The other body has made it clear 
that they do not feel that Davis-Bacon should be repealed. The wisdom 
of 1931 of Davis and Bacon still prevails. It makes sense to use 
Federal money for construction projects. Whether you are constructing 
highways or bridges or building Federal buildings, it makes sense to go 
into a community and try to maintain the stability of that community by 
paying the workers at the same level that other workers are paid.
  Unfortunately, Davis-Bacon is certainly not close to, in most cases, 
what really is the prevailing wage. For some reason it always comes 
under. Not always, there are a few exceptions, but it comes way under 
in most cases what is really the prevailing wage.
  Davis-Bacon is not driving up the cost of building, I assure you. In 
Macon, GA, we have the same pattern. We are talking about the average 
pay for all workers in Macon, GA, $23,000, workers who are hourly 
workers.

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