Press Releases

The Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, chaired by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), today held a hearing to examine the Department of Labor’s implementation of the Davis-Bacon Act. According to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, a number of challenges affecting the department’s execution of the Act could potentially reduce earnings for workers or increase project costs to taxpayers.

Chairman Walberg called the GAO report “deeply troubling,” and stated, “These are stunning conclusions for a law that governs how hundreds of billions of taxpayer-dollars are spent. In fact, the failed stimulus committed an estimated $300 billion to federal construction projects that could potentially be covered by Davis-Bacon wage rates. In 2009 alone, federal construction and rehabilitation projects totaled roughly $220 billion.”

Witnesses testified to the challenges plaguing the department’s implementation of the Davis-Bacon requirements. Tom Mistick, owner of Church Restoration Group in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, described his own personal struggle with enforcement of the law. In response to the GAO report, Mistick said the department “is simply incapable of implementing the Davis-Bacon Act’s provision in a fair and common-sense manner.”

James Sherk, a senior policy analyst in labor economics at the Heritage Foundation, outlined what’s at stake for workers and taxpayers. Sherk stated the department “uses unscientific methods and unrepresentative data” and therefore “rates typically bear little relation to actual prevailing wages.” He continued, “These inaccurate Davis-Bacon rates harm both workers and taxpayers.” Sherk’s research demonstrates that properly determining the prevailing wages would reduce federal construction costs by nearly $11 billion this year and lead to an additional 155,000 jobs for the nation’s construction workers.

With unsustainable deficits and high unemployment, a flawed Davis-Bacon Act imposes additional burdens on taxpayers and workers. Unfortunately, recent changes at the Department of Labor still fail to provide a more accurate and fair determination of prevailing wages. As the witness representing the GAO reported during his testimony, “recent efforts to improve the Davis-Bacon wage survey have not yet addressed key issues with survey quality.”

Ignoring the challenges outlined in the GAO report would be detrimental to the nation’s economy. As Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN) noted during the hearing, “Short-changing workers and over-charging taxpayers is unacceptable.” 

 

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