WASHINGTON —Building trades union leaders lauded the Democratic Biden administration’s plans to revise and update the rules implementing the Davis-Bacon Act, improving enforcement, and expanding its reach. The Labor Department said the changes could raise the pay for at least 1.2 million U.S. construction workers.
The rewrite, announced March 11, is open for comments for 60 days before the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, which administers the law, analyzes them, and then issues final rules. Davis-Bacon and the rules cover at least 1.2 million workers right now and at least $217 billion worth of federally funded construction per year. Both numbers could rise.
And hundreds of thousands of more workers will be covered, assuming the rules are adopted, as federally funded construction—of everything from bridges to subways to airports to bus terminals–swings upwards thanks to the $1.2 trillion five-year infrastructure law Biden pushed through Congress last year.
“The act’s purpose is ‘to protect local wage standards by preventing contractors from basing their bids on wages lower than those prevailing in the area,’” Wage and Hour Division said in its official publication of the proposed rules.
In so many words, that cuts cut-rate construction contractors out of federal bidding, a key goal for the building trades. Those contractors are anti-union and also often exploit undocumented people who seek and work in construction jobs.
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