 |
 Bureau joins other
associations in effort to promote the benefits of Missouri's
Prevailing Wage Law.
The Plaster Bureau has joined with the other members of the
St. Louis Council of Construction Employers to promote a
study by the University of Missouri-Kansas City's Department
of Economics that overwhelmingly proves the benefit of the
state's prevailing wage law. Prevailing Wage Laws require
that construction workers on public projects be paid the
wages and benefits that are found by the Department of Labor
to be "prevailing" for similar work in a given locale where
the construction work is to be performed. State and local
governments have become sensitized to the cost of public
construction projects where tax dollars are spent and
budgets are tight. What the UMKC study found was
dramatically different than one would expect. That higher
wages and benefits paid under prevailing wage actually
produce more tax revenue for the state and local
governments, limit out-of-town contractors taking our tax
money out of state and realizing a tax multiplier effect of
three as dollars are earned and spent locally. The study
also found that "prevailing wage" states have better safety
records, a more highly skilled workforce and the workforce
is much more productive. In fact, the study showed that a
mile of highway construction in Kansas, a state that
repealed its prevailing wage law in 1987, costs
approximately $325,000 more per mile than a mile of highway
in Missouri. In fact a national study showed that higher
wages actually result in lower highway cost per mile. The
UMKC study concludes that, based upon statistical and
empirical evidence, the real cost to Missouri, not cost
savings, would be nearly $340 million lost annually, if the
state repealed its prevailing wage law.
Submitted June 20, 2006
by Bill Kendrick |
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