Wage survey needs help from contractors 
The building trades are knee-deep in the effort to help the U.S. Department of Labor get an accurate assessment of prevailing wage rates across Michigan.

But not surprisingly, they could use more effort from the contractor community.

A committee of building trades representatives and contractor associations have sent out 8,500 information packets to all signatory contractors throughout the state. Follow-up efforts will try to make sure contractors accurately fill out wage and benefit information on the forms, in an effort to make sure that union wage rates are as "prevailing" as possible.

Ed Hartfield, who is leading the effort on behalf of the Operating Engineers Local 324 Labor-Management Committee, said each packet contains an explanation of the survey, a sample wage and benefit form, instructions, and contact information.

Hartfield said a call center has been set up to answer questions from union and contractor reps, and meetings have been held with building trades councils and contractor groups around the state to maximize participation.

"We're using every means available to get the word out," Hartfield said. "At the moment, we're not getting the level of participation we'd like to see from the contractors in terms of completed forms, but we're working at it." From day one, organizers of this effort have expected contractor participation to be the weak link in this effort - mainly because they don't want to allocate personnel to the effort.

The reason for all this activity: The U.S. Department of Labor is conducting the first-ever intensive survey of prevailing wage rates in Michigan in 2003. The building trades began efforts early this year to coordinate and maximize responses from union contractors, because those higher wage rates will be used as the basis for wages on state and federal projects in various trade classifications for years to come.

Contractors often rely upon the prevailing wage rates published by the DOL in assembling their bids for projects. Having DOL prevailing wage rates that properly reflect union wage and fringe benefit levels not only puts money in the pockets of unionized building trades workers on state and federal jobs, it helps to assure that union wages and fringes will be the basis for all bids on those jobs, by union and nonunion contractors.

Now, Bush targets white collar OT
The Bush Administration seems to love the idea of cutting overtime for business.

Last month, the "Family Time Flexibility Act" was introduced in the U.S. House, which would have allowed employers to give workers compensatory time off in place of time-and-a-half pay for every overtime hour worked. The problem is, employers would have the ultimate say on when employees could take their comp time.

Organized labor managed to quash that bill, for now. But now comes another proposal from Bush, which would make thousands of white-collar workers ineligible for time-and-a-half pay after they work 40 hours a week. The rules don't require approval by Congress, and clear up the murky federal rules governing overtime. The new rules would affect workers who make more than $65,000 per year.

Mark Wilson, a Labor Department spokesman, told the Wall Street Journalthat workers who make more than $65,000 a year are already well paid and should expect to work long hours.