Labor Fights to Preserve Davis-Bacon

Elena Schor, The Hill, 15 septembre 2005. Article faisant le portrait de la controverse et de l’opposition des unions syndicales face à la suspension pour une durée indéterminée de la loi Davis-Bacon dans les États touchés par l’ouragan Katrina.

Labor fights to preserve Davis-Bacon By Elana Schor

Among the litany of regulations in line to be eased or suspended during the daunting rebuilding process on the Gulf Coast are several that have greatly alarmed labor unions, whose furious lobbying efforts are hitting a brick wall of conservative might.

Union officials are concerned that President Bush’s Sept. 8 suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires federal contractors to pay construction workers a prevailing wage, was only the beginning. Further hurting the union cause is GOP lawmakers’ support for broad bureaucratic relaxation in the Labor Department, a push rooted in the long-standing bad blood between unions and Republican think tanks.

“I think this is a mean-spirited attack on the labor movement. The right wing has never been able to touch us in the legislative arena on Davis-Bacon. They saw an opportunity and took it,” said Don Kaniewski, political director for the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA).

The presidents of LIUNA, the carpenters union and the engineers union wrote to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) yesterday decrying the Davis-Bacon suspension. LIUNA and the carpenters belong to the new labor federation Change to Win, formed by unions seceded from the AFL-CIO, while the engineers remain AFL-CIO members.

Despite the scrutiny heaped upon organized labor for its internal division, the AFL-CIO echoed LIUNA’s concerns, singling out Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) as an instrumental force for undoing worker-rights laws.

“People in the think-tank world have a long history of opposing protection for unions,” said AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuel, resulting in a GOP “leadership that is pretty determinedly anti-labor. We haven’t gotten a single phone call from Republicans on the Hill asking what should we do for this crisis.”

The AFL-CIO sent legislative recommendations to Sen. Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, for use as he spearheads the drafting of a broad Katrina bill that will include employee-benefits provisions. But when asked whether Davis-Bacon’s wage floors would be taken into account, Enzi said no and that he had no position on the act.

Bush waived Davis-Bacon for storm-affected areas in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana as well as the two southernmost counties of Florida, one day after receiving a letter from Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and 34 other House Republicans urging him to do so. While hundreds of thousands of Gulf homes were destroyed, local reports estimated that Katrina leveled about 350 houses in South Florida.

Norquist, for his part, was far from cowed by the possibility of political counterattack by the AFL-CIO or Change to Win.

“Oh, gee, maybe they’ll try to oppose the president the next time he runs for office,” Norquist cracked. He added that the temporary Davis-Bacon suspension “certainly strengthens the case” for an eventual full repeal. “It will make it obvious to people what the dead-weight costs of Davis-Bacon will be.”

On the heels of Davis-Bacon will come a likely easing of the Service Contract Act, mandating a prevailing wage for service workers on federal contracts. The purpose of abandoning wage floors, both labor and conservative sources agreed, is to increase efficiency and help companies rebuilding the Gulf Coast to save money. Where that money will go is another story.

Samuel wondered whether Congress should institute an oversight mechanism to ensure construction savings are passed from the private companies retained by the government and into federal coffers. “These no-bid contracts, are they somehow mandating lower profits ?” he asked. Firms awarded lucrative reconstruction jobs include several with ties to the White House, and most have already reaped the benefits through rising stock prices.

The impact of labor deregulation will be felt politically as well as financially. One building-trades lobbyist, who asked to remain anonymous because his group’s internal division means it can take no stance on the issue, pointed out that prevailing wages in the Gulf are so much lower than the national average that the suspension will barely move profits.

“Politically, it was a mistake. Practically, it will have no impact. It was a fight the administration didn’t need to take on at this time,” the lobbyist said.

However, he noted, the conservative voting record of construction union members as compared with the rest of the labor community means congressional Republicans could see swing votes slip away for the 2006 election. “Now the leaders of the building trades will be reporting to their members, ‘you can’t trust Republicans, because every time they have a chance they are going to weaken Davis-Bacon,’” he said.

Ryan Ellis, ATR’s labor lobbyist, conceded that historically low paychecks for Gulf workers will result in less potential savings from Davis-Bacon elimination. He reinforced the widespread conservative contention that unions hoard workers’ wages for use on dues payments and political giving to Democrats.

“Some of the money [from a prevailing wage] would go to workers, but a lot of it would be siphoned off by unions through dues money because they are no longer forced to hold taxpayers hostage through union contracts. The union guys would rather have taxpayer dollars go into their pockets,” Ellis said. Despite the difference between Davis-Bacon’s prevailing wage and the standard union wage, he said, they are “de facto” identical.

The Labor Department is examining still more areas in which existing rules can be suspended for Katrina relief to accelerate. Official word from Secretary Elaine Chao of new 401(k) hardship loans for Gulf workers and waiver relaxation at state work-force investment boards, in addition to other moves, could come as quickly as today.

“We are looking at [more] ways to release red tape to deliver needed resources to workers who have been affected,” said Labor Department spokesman David James.