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Anti-labor bills lurking in GOP’s agenda
By Marty Mulcahy
Managing Editor
LANSING – After the initial flurry of anti-worker, anti-union bills introduced in the Republican-dominated legislature earlier this year, then numerous protest rallies on the Capitol Building’s front steps, follow-up legislative action has been moving a bit slowly, hasn’t it?
“Not at all,” said Patrick Devlin, secretary-treasurer of the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council. “Don’t mistake the lack of headlines coming out of Lansing as a sign that nothing has been happening on all those bills. Things are moving slowly, but they’re moving, and we don’t like a lot of what we’re seeing.”
So far, the worst legislation to be adopted, as far as organized labor is concerned, is the passage of the Emergency Financial Manager legislation, which basically allows the appointment by the governor of a full-fledged dictator to govern financially strapped municipalities and school districts. The EFM would have the complete ability to abrogate union contracts, hire and fire workers, and sell property.
But there’s plenty more happening in Republican-led legislative committees and back rooms that could have a devastating effect on the building trades and the rest of organized labor. Furthest along in the process are resolutions to severely restrict the use of project labor agreements on state-funded construction projects. Republican work on the anti-PLA legislation is ahead of legislation that would overturn the Michigan Prevailing Wage Act, which is also a major concern of the building trades.
Both the state House and Senate have passed different versions of anti-PLA laws.
Devlin has testified for PLAs and provided information to Republican lawmakers on the business benefits of project labor agreements – but he’s not optimistic, given what he’s hearing. “PLAs are in trouble,” he said. “Republicans are getting their marching orders from the (anti-union) Associated Builders and Contractors, and they would love to ban PLAs. We’ve got our work cut out for us.”
The anti-PLA measures that are in the House and Senate would outlaw the use of project labor agreements by the state or by individual municipalities, school districts or universities on construction projects that use state tax money. Devlin said Republicans are also looking to ban the use of PLAs on construction projects that are also indirect recipients of state tax credits, like those given for brownfield projects and land grants.
Just like in private business, several cities, counties, school boards and universities in Michigan have adopted laws in past years that allow the use of project labor agreements. They’re usually drawn up by the construction team for a particular project and allow the hiring of workers who are subject to a collective bargaining agreement at prevailing wage levels, in exchange for things like agreeing to no-strikes, no lockouts, safety and drug testing, and shift premiums.
“They’re just local business agreements – that’s all PLAs really are,” Devlin said. “And now Republicans in this state want to tell local communities what they can’t and can’t do, even if PLAs have worked great for them in the past.”
Todd Tennis, a lobbyist for the IBEW, said “the first slew” of more than 40 anti-labor bills have been targeted at public sector employees. In addition to the EFM law, other bills would do things like restrict their ability to collectively bargain, collect dues and conduct business on municipal property.
“A lot of people in the building trades might say that’s not our fight, but they’re coming after the public sector unions today and they’re coming after us tomorrow,” Tennis said. “Once they get past the state budget, look out.”
Operating Engineers Local 324 Legislative Director Lisa Canada said passage of the state budget has moved much of the anti-worker legislation to the back-burner, but that doesn’t mean it’s not cooking. Gov. Rick Snyder has said he wants the budget approved by the end of May.
“I think this is a good time to educate our members, and get them motivated to contact their legislators, and let them know that what they’re doing is going to be a detriment to our livelihood,” she said.
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ABC targets prevailing wage in Bay City
Prevailing wage is now being attacked on two fronts in Michigan.
In addition to the attacks by state lawmakers, a lawsuit was filed on April 8 in Bay County’s 18th Circuit Court seeking to overturn Bay City’s prevailing wage ordinance. Bay City’s ordinance requires the payment of prevailing wages on city construction contracts exceeding $10,000.
The legal action was taken by the Saginaw Valley Area Chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors, which has a history of bringing anti-labor lawsuits before the courts. The ABC is basing its lawsuit on a 2007 Wayne County Circuit court ruling which overturned the City of Detroit’s living wage law. The living wage law set a base wage for workers, higher than minimum wage, whose employers contracted with the City of Detroit.
The ruling overturning the Detroit living wage law basically said that the city did not have the home rule authority to legislate in the area of labor. The Wayne County judge’s ruling was upheld by a state Appeals Court panel.
So what does all that have to do with overturning Bay City’s prevailing wage law?
“Ever since that (Wayne County Circuit Court) ruling, we’ve been expecting the ABC to file a lawsuit somewhere in an attempt to overturn local prevailing wage laws,” said Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council attorney John Canzano. “Everybody knew that ruling was going to put local prevailing wage laws at risk. But we have some good arguments to support local prevailing wage laws, and we’re confident we will prevail.”
Canzano said for one, “prevailing wage is not living wage, and we’re going to point out all the differences.” Secondly he said the Wayne Couty’s judge’s ruling was not published, so it was not legally binding for other judges in the state to follow.
The ABC likely brought its case against Bay City as part of a legal strategy. Canzano said if the ABC wins the case, it would likely invalidate prevailing wage in the 20 or so cities in Michigan that have such laws.
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Raleigh Studios ready to roll
By Marty Mulcahy
Managing Edito r
PONTIAC – Walbridge, their subcontractors and the building trades have finished their construction roles at the Raleigh Michigan Studios complex. Next on stage: the people who make movies.
Design-builder Walbridge handed over the keys to the owners of the studio’s Building One on April 11, and then Building Two on April 23. The structures make up a complex that transformed 427,000 square-feet of the old GM Truck Products Center East into soundstages that offer movie or television producers the most modern production facilities in the world.
We reported on this project last fall, and were invited back to see the finished project. Early in April, a dwindling crew of about 45 Hardhats were on site performing finish work in the nine-month project, including fire alarm installation, sound and duct insulation, emergency lights, and some concrete pours.
“We’re hopefully building the future of Michigan, and this was done all-union, proudly,” said Maryland Electric Foreman Jason Head of IBEW Local 58.
Pre-production workers from Walt Disney Studios had already been at Raleigh Michigan Studios a few weeks before the complex was complete to prepare for the first project at the site, a movie remake of the “Wizard of Oz,” tentatively titled “Oz: The Great and Powerful.”
“The trades have been fantastic,” said Walbridge Project Supt. Garry McIver. “We’ve worked 115,000 man-hours without a single recordable or lost-time injury. “We’ve had producers, directors and representatives from all the major studios see what we’ve done, and they’re amazed at the quality of the facilities. They’re second to none.”
The studio facilities are hardly typical construction. There are nine soundstages: three are 30,000 square-feet, two are 20,000 square-feet, and two are 12,000 square feet. By moving some walls, it’s possible to create a single stage of 90,000 square-feet.
The structures are basically big, over-built shells. The goal of the studios’ infrastructure-on-steriods construction is aimed at making motion pictures as easy as possible in three main areas:
*Reducing sound infiltration. Studio walls are comprised of 371 massive pre-cast concrete panels. They’re 15 inches thick, with two five-inch concrete panels sandwiching five inches of syrofoam. There are six inches of insulation in the ceiling. McIver said some soundstages around the country can’t operate in the rain because of the noise.
*Providing sufficient electrical capacity. Lights, cameras and any other action on soundstages require plenty of power, and electricians set up a power grid with a capacity of 3,200 amps per studio. “That’s huge,” electrical foreman Jason Head remarked.
*Beefed-up walls and ceilings. Roof trusses weigh more than 70 tons each. Wooden ceiling grids (used because they don’t conduct electricity) in the studios can support 5,000 lbs. per single contact point.
As the project was winding down, McIver said they had been conducting tours at a rate of about two a day for people from the movie industry, politicians, construction, and other interested parties.
Some of the wind was taken out of the sails of the studios’ owners a few weeks after Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder took office in January, when he said he didn’t support full funding of the state tax credit that helped bring about the construction of the Raleigh-Michigan Studios. Supporters of the film industry tax incentives say the jobs – both in and out of the movie industry, such as in construction – that are created counter-balance the cost to the state.
“We’re hoping the jury is still out on the tax incentives, “McIver said. “We’re building a world-class studio, and the people from Hollywood have said they’d love to come and work here.”
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INSIDE THE 30,000-square-foot Studio E at Raleigh-Michigan Studios in Pontiac are IBEW Local 58 electricians (l-r) apprentice Dujuan Ligonis, foreman Jason Head and journeyman Thomas Campbell, working for Maryland Electric. Above them is a wooden grid that allows a non-conductive surface from which to move wires and hang props. Covering the concrete walls are sections of sound-deadening insulation.
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WORKING ON CHILLED water lines at the Raleigh Michigan Studios in Pontiac, above, is Tony Sievert of Pipe Fitters Local 636.
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HERE IS THE UTILITARIAN exterior of part of the completed studio complex, consisting of tilted-up concrete panels to form the walls.
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Prevailing wage gets an ‘attaboy’ before Congress
‘Better paid, more skilled workers are safer, work more
efficiently, and deliver a better product’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The federal Davis-Bacon Act has established a prevailing wage rule for building trades workers on taxpayer-funded construction since 1931. In recent years efforts to outright repeal the law have failed, in good part due to relatively minor, but important, support from Republicans in Congress.
But the attacks continue. A recent Government Accounting Office (GAO) report found that irregularities and the sheer lack of the voluntary employer wage reports have resulted in wildly inaccurate prevailing wage levels across the U.S. The building trades have agreed that wage rates need to be properly and fairly updated – only a few years ago we reported that in some of Michigan’s rural counties, a lack of current wage surveys meant the prevailing wage for at least one trade was only $9 per hour.
Today, some Republicans are using the GAO report as a means to attack prevailing wage – even though an outdated, inaccurate prevailing wage almost certainly means that wage rates are set too low. The GAO report basically recommended that the Labor Department improve its recordkeeping practices to obtain better information.
A hearing was held on April 14 in front of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Workforce Protections Committee. It was chaired by Tim Walberg, a Republican from Michigan’s 7th District. Following are excerpts of comments made at the hearing from Walberg, and from Roy Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute, a think-tank.
“Established by the Hoover administration in 1931,” said Walberg in his introduction, “the Davis-Bacon Act requires workers be paid the ‘prevailing wage rates’ on federal construction projects costing taxpayers more than $2,000. Prevailing wages are determined through a complex system of wage surveys administered by the Department of Labor.
“The GAO revealed problems with accuracy, quality, bias, and timeliness of the wage data. Of the surveys reviewed, one in four of the final wage rates were based on the wages of just six or fewer workers. Forty-six percent of the prevailing wages for non-union workers were based on wages reported 10 or more years ago.”
Walberg continued: “In 2009 alone, federal construction and rehabilitation projects totaled roughly $220 billion. Are these taxpayer dollars being well spent, and if not, then what should be done about it? Those are the questions we hope to answer today.”
The Economic Policy Institute has long been a champion of prevailing wage laws, and EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey was invited to testify before the subcommittee.
“Congress enacted the Davis-Bacon Act,” Eisenbrey said, “to assure workers on federal construction projects a fair wage and to provide local contractors a fair opportunity to compete for construction contracts. The requirement to pay no less than locally prevailing wages is essential to protect local standards and to prevent competition based on low wages rather than on productivity, efficiency and quality.
“The Act has succeeded in those goals for 80 years, so it’s easy to forget its importance. Like many things in life, it’s only when it’s gone that we realize just how valuable its protections really are.”
He continued: “Hurricane Katrina is a case in point. After the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast, President Bush suspended the Act by executive order. What happened? Workers didn’t get a fair wage because contractors could bid the work at the minimum wage instead of the prevailing wage. They brought in itinerant crews from outside the Gulf Coast – even from outside the U.S. – and paid rock bottom wages. Roofers, for example were reportedly hired at $60 per day.
“Local contractors couldn’t compete and got passed over at their hour of greatest need and opportunity. Stories in the Baltimore Sun, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and New Orleans Times-Picayune reported on the unhappiness of local businesses that watched multinationals sweep in and take millions of dollars of federal clean-up contracts. An editorial in the Times-Picayune under the headline ‘Rebuilding effort should be localized’ hit the nail on the head:
“(W)e are already moving quickly and boldly in the wrong direction…(Y)ou can hardly entice (our citizens) back if you’re only willing to pay poverty wages. But in the wake of the disaster, President Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act….In
essence, there’s no ceiling preventing sky-high profits for these (out-of-state) contractors and not much of a floor to ensure that wages to workers are not abysmally low. There is an intelligent way to rebuild our city. This, however, isn’t
it.”
Eisenbrey defended the federal prevailing wage law, pointing out that the Davis-Bacon Act “incentivizes” apprenticeships by permitting payment of lower wage rates to employees enrolled in bona fide apprenticeship programs. Contractors can submit lower bids when they employ bona fide apprentices as part of their workforce. Critics, he said, claim these goals are achieved at too high a price, that the act raises the cost of construction, benefiting the workers at the expense of taxpayers.
“But a great deal of empirical research refutes the claim that prevailing wage laws inflate construction costs,” Eisenbrey said. “Work by Professors Peter Philips and Garth Magnum of the University of Utah, by Prof. Dale Belman of Michigan State University, and Prof. Hamid Azari-Rad of the State University of New York, among others, shows that prevailing wage laws lift workers’ wages and compensation without significantly increasing construction costs.
“Higher wages lead employers to invest in labor-saving tools and equipment, which increases productivity. Better paid, more skilled workers are safer, work more efficiently, and deliver a better product. Prof. Philips has calculated that construction workers in states with ‘little Davis-Bacon’ prevailing wage laws are more productive, on
average, than construction workers in non-prevailing wage states. Their value added is 13-15 percent higher per employee.
“Given that construction wages and benefits are only about 30 percent of construction costs, it is easy to see how higher productivity offsets the increased cost of prevailing wages.”
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Labor, and the left lack effective message to state their vision scholars say
By Mark Gruenberg
Press Associates
WASHINGTON (PAI)—The U.S. left, including unions, needs one unifying theme to both rally their own forces and to gain public backing, a panel of scholars says.
And the four scholars, two from the U.S. and two from abroad, add income inequality could be that theme. But they quickly noted the left must figure out how to get its message across to the masses, and what solutions to offer for the problem.
The lack of a message from the left, especially one that appeals to the mass of the U.S., is a persistent problem the labor movement faces. Several unions, notably the Teachers, have tried to address it. AFT has repeatedly declared that unions’ theme should be that “worker rights are human rights.” But other unions have not followed.
The four scholars – Steven Kramer of the National Defense University, Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin, former senior Australian Labor Party political advisor Christopher Barrett and Italian attorney and veteran diplomat Roberto Toscano – spoke April 25 at the Woodrow Wilson International Studies Center in Washington.
“The left needs a vision. Once it was” opposition to “slavery, and the solution was freedom,” Kazin said. “Once it was corporate capitalism, and the solution was industrial democracy. Today, many people point to the income gap, but it’ll take a big leap” to find a solution, he admitted. There was no shortage of their comments about the problems the left, as a movement, faces both here and abroad.
In recent years, they said the U.S. left has concentrated on gaining individual political rights rather than economic rights and equality of opportunity. So they suggested the left, including unions, could adopt the yawning gap between the rich and the rest of us as the theme – explaining why it occurred and offering plans to close it.
They noted the Right has consistently found one unifying theme, such as “anti-communism” or “anti-terrorism,” with which to scare people. And the Right succeeded in demonizing its opponents along the way, particularly by tagging all progressives as “Socialists” and linking them to abuses in the former Soviet Union. The left, the scholars said, has developed no similar unifying theme to appeal to the mass of people. And its defenses and institutions – unions in the U.S. and Social Democratic parties in Europe – have been weakened, divided, or both, they said.
The scholars warned workers’ rights may be too specific to unify the left and rally the rest of the U.S. Kazin noted the labor movement succeeded in big causes that united much of the U.S., such as civil rights, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But its own cause – labor law reform – was perceived as just its own interest, and lost.
The scholars also warned the left in general, and unions in particular, have communication problems, especially with white working class men. And the left missed an opportunity, with the Great Recession, to pin the problems of workers on those who caused them, particularly the bankers, traders and financiers, Kramer said.
That let the Right step in and blame “regulations,” repeating the errors of the 1920s, he added. The reaction of the country to anti-recession legislation was that the bankers got bailed out and everyone else did not, leading to the 2010 Republican sweep, he noted.
And now there’s another global problem the left must deal with: The unanticipated – at least in the West – rise of industrialization in developing nations, especially China.
“That’s led to calls for ‘competitiveness,’ used as a battering ram to smash the gains and benefits of the middle class,” Kramer said.
With the Right resurgent in the U.S. after the money-fueled GOP election sweep in 2010, the left finds itself, Kazin said, in an odd position: “We’ll have to act as conservatives,” in the true sense of the word, “conserving what was gained before, such as Medicare, Social Security and collective bargaining.”
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Unions ‘instrumental’ in building middle class
By Sander Levin
U.S. Congress – 12th District
The king can do no wrong.
I first heard that maxim when I was a young labor lawyer in Michigan in the early 1960s. I had called an official of a public institution on behalf of their employees who wanted to be represented and engaged in collective bargaining.
“As a public entity,” the official responded, “we cannot bind ourselves.”
Public institutions regularly bind themselves through contracts to construct buildings, I noted: “Why are conditions of work for employees different?”
Referring to English common law, he answered: “Because the king can do no wrong.”
That saying has stuck with me ever since. From the days that I wrote, as chairman of the Michigan State Senate Labor Committee, the first comprehensive public employment labor relations bill in the nation. Through the moment shortly after, when I sat face-to-face with Republican Gov. George Romney working out the final language for the legislation.
And it sticks with me today –46 years after Michigan's Public Employment Relations Act passed with broad bipartisan support – as I watch the governors in Wisconsin and other states try to eliminate state workers’ collective bargaining rights.
Before that historic bill in Michigan, which was followed by similar action in a number of state legislatures around the country, teachers in the state made an average salary of $6,745 – about twice the poverty rate for a family of four. Little more, often less than $500 a year, was provided for health insurance.
Firefighters made about $6,300 a year, regularly working 24-hour, six-day stretches without time off.
The right to collectively bargain changed public sector workers’ lives for the better – just as it had done to the lives of their private sector counterparts only years earlier. Teachers, firefighters, police officers and everyone from state prison guards to local maintenance workers all strove for better wages and working conditions. They bargained for some health care coverage and retirement income. And they sought safer working environments.
These efforts were instrumental in helping to create Michigan’s burgeoning middle class. Workers’ voices were heard and represented, bringing a vital element of democracy to the public sector workplace.
As one fire chief recently told me, collective bargaining gives firefighters and him – as the management – the chance to sit down and work out issues. “I don't want to be a dictator,” he said.
Today’s ballooning deficits within many state and local governments must be faced head on. Public employees and their representatives are willing to help. In many cases they already are, making the kinds of sacrifices familiar to many of their private sector colleagues, including those in the automotive industry just a few years ago.
What is indefensible is to use the deficit problem to return to the days in the public sector where employees did not have a seat at the table in the workplace.
We should not return to the days when teachers, firefighters, police officers and so many other employees were left out in the cold when working to help their families become part of the middle class.
We should not return to the days when the king could do no wrong.
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NEWS BRIEFS
New Hampshire to get RTW law
New Hampshire will soon be the newest member of the right-to-work club.
The New Hampshire State Senate on April 20 voted 16-8 to approve a right-to-work law for the Granite State. The state House had already adopted the bill.
The state’s governor, a Democrat, has vowed to veto the bill, but Republicans in both the House and Senate enjoy veto-proof super-majorities.
Passage of the bill will make New Hampshire the nation’s 23rd right-to-work state, and the first in the Northeast. Oklahoma was the last state to adopt such a law, in 2001. Most states that have the law became RTW states in the 1940s and 1950s.
Right-to-work laws allow “free riders” in the workplace to enjoy the benefits of union membership and contracts, without having to pay dues. According to the New Hampshire Business Insider, their bill takes the law a step further, by barring employers and unions from agreeing to a “fair share” clause, which would require nonunion members to make payments in lieu of union dues to cover the cost of contract negotiations.
In “Right-to-Work: Wrong for New Hampshire,” economist Gordon Lafer wrote: “Contrary to what RTW backers have claimed, the scientific analysis of right-to-work laws shows that they lower wages and benefits for both union and nonunion workers alike without exhibiting any positive impact on job growth. Simply put, at a time of economic need, right-to-work laws are a prescription for further decline.”
EFM law already taking effect
DETROIT (PAI) – The Radical Right’s war on workers took a new, ominous turn in Michigan in late April, with outright state takeover of the Detroit schools, layoff of all 5,466 teachers and state takeover of the entire government of Benton Harbor.
The takeovers were both done under a law pushed through by the GOP majority in the Michigan legislature and approved by GOP Gov. Rick Snyder.
Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb said he needed to fire all Detroit teachers, close 25 schools and take over the district because it’s budget was $327 million in the red. That statement echoed other state and local officials nationwide who use deficits to justify crackdowns on workers and unions.
The Detroit Federation of Teachers replied high special education spending and $100 million in debt service costs caused the deficit, which was around $200 million per year just two years before.
In Benton Harbor, emergency manager Joseph Harris, who took over all of the city’s finances in 2010, took over everything else on April 21. Among other things, Harris cut fire services, trashed union contracts and said he would turn over a lakefront public park – open to all – to a private consortium which would build a golf course there.
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