Union wages "prevailing" despite unions representing only a minority of construction workers strengthens the case for repealing Pennsylvania's taxpayer-shafting prevailing wage law.
David Denholm, president of the Public Service Research Foundation, says data analyzed on a five-year average basis show that in 2011, 21.7 percent of construction workers were unionized statewide, 27.3 percent in the Philadelphia metro area. Extrapolating from less detailed and comprehensive available data, he says the Pittsburgh metro area figure is about 24.7 percent.
Yet state officials have "a strong preference for determining that union wages and benefits prevail," Mr. Denholm says. Their methodology for setting prevailing wages -- which apply to publicly funded projects exceeding $25,000 -- "is rigged to favor union wage rates and it is costing the taxpayers," he adds.
Proposed half-measures -- such as raising the project-cost threshold to $185,000 to reflect inflation since the law's 1960 passage -- wouldn't solve that problem. Repeal would.
Repeal of this market-distorting, union-favoring measure also would maximize savings for taxpayers and opportunity for construction's vast nonunion-worker majority. Their interests -- aligned with the public's -- must "prevail" over the union minority's.
