Talk:Davis–Bacon Act of 1931

United States Code

The article states that it is 40 U.S.C. 3141-3148, but that code wasn't present in FindLaw. The closest I could find was 40 U.S.C. § 276a. Can anyone advise? --Arcadian 02:09, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Blatant violations of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view

This article needs a major overhaul. It is currently written from a specific (and rather marginal) POV - namely, that the Davis-Bacon law was racist in intent and effect. This is presented as fact, when it is actually one of the sides of a political dispute. For instance, there is nothing in the article indicating that the NAACP is currently a staunch supporter of the law [1] [2]. Nor are arguments in favor of Davis-Bacon given anywhere near as much room as those in opposition. I am going to try to clean this up, but until that is done, I'm slapping a {{NPOV}} tag on. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 03:34, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to ask some questions about how to improve the article, and I want to see if you can avoid accusing me of "debating the underlying issues".

The article originally was supported to help unions at the expense of blacks. It did at the time reflect the described desires. Making it NPOV would not mean whitewashing history, but adding that that is no longer the reason it is supported. Minorities are disproportionately impacted. In any case, these matters are limited to the end of the intro and beginning of the first sections. The rest of the article seems okay NPOV-wise. I don't know where you get "rampant" violations or whatever. I had to edit some of the pro-DBA stuff, like calling it worker "protections" (replaced with "wage floors"). MrVoluntarist 05:23, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

It seems like the racial intent is a very important point to make if it is reflected in the effect. Intuitively this makes sense - if "prevailing wages" must be paid, there is no reason to use cheaper, more transient labor. If this class of people is disproportionately minority, the effect continues. --Ajdz 07:18, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I support user Crotalus horridus's initial comments. I don't have time to elaborate, but will come back to it later. For now, if the article is to discuss race then it must also discuss Jim Crow laws, segregation in the South, and the ways in which African-Americans were repressed there long after slavery ended, and the violent and brutal repression of attempts to organize unions there, thus creating pools of underpaid labor. Otherwise the article becomes a shallow, static (vs. evolving), reductionist view of economic history, without context. Davis-Bacon was designed to prevent the "whipsawing" of labor, not to repress blacks. There is some analogy to present-day shipping in of Chinese workers to the Marianas Islands to assemble textiles. (E.g.http://www.house.gov/georgemiller/marianasupdate.html) A static snapshot only of the Marianas ignores the brutal repression of Chinese labor, the denial of basic human rights there including due process of law, the repression of migrant workers within China, etc. Without the creation of communities (countries, states, unions, ethics boards, legal communities, etc.) whip-sawing of labor can and certainly does occur. (Look at the brutal treatment of sailors aboard ships for one clear example.)

Wow, another anonymous troll supports the POV-pushing of a repeatedly blocked user? I'm shocked. Let's see if we can't keep the original research out. MrVoluntarist 21:19, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

"Despite anti-union criticism, union apprenticeship programs (which Davis-Bacon tends to promote) actively recruit and train minorities to this day." This seems to be a pretty "point of view" statement. How does the behavior of unions affect Davis-Bacon? This is not a union article, it is a Davis-Bacon article.adder70 —Preceding undated comment added 11:49, 23 April 2010 (UTC).

The POV of this law having racist undertones at it's inception does not and should not be interpreted as anti union sentiment. The law was passed in the 1930's after all, and racism was alive and well in all parts of America. The truly disturbing POV's are displayed by those that are trying to deny the true origins of the law to protect the modern law that protects union workers and their bosses from true competition or "whipsawing". To say that is was racist then does not mean it is racist today. Not recognizing that this law was another form of institutionalized racism to protect a modern day POV is wrong. [[Publius.Ca.}}Publius.Ca. (talk)August 13, 2010~~... —Preceding undated comment added 04:24, 14 August 2010 (UTC).

I made many unobjectionable (hopefully!) edits for objectivity. See new talk section below.Greg Guy (talk) 22:28, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Not sure what you did, Greg, but the current article has almost precisely nothing about the viewpoint that the act was passed in order to prevent non-unionized black and immigrant laborers from competing with unionized white workers - which today would be considered racist and anti-immigrant. I'm thinking we should mention a bit about this, even though we should not enshrine this POV as the truth; it is, of course just one side of a controversy. --Uncle Ed (talk) 17:18, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Davis is Standard Spelling

Davis is the standard spelling of Senator Davis's name. Leave it alone. BruceW07 18:38, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Davis-Bacon and foreign workers

Can anyone advise if this Act has any provisions for foreign workers? Are they entitled to the same wage calculations?

Thanks so much, K8

Created as a Jim Crow law

This section clearly contradicts the intro section. Vgranucci 00:25, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I cited my sources that it was created as a Jim Crow law. Grundle2600 05:21, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

You cited your sources but 3 of your 4 sources did not cite theirs. Only the final Walter Williams article did. He quotes the Congressional Record and finds that Southern supporters of the bill argued in favor of supressing the use of minority labor. If you read that article you would find that the bill's author Representative Bacon, did not share that view.Chops79 (talk) 15:53, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I looked at the Jim Crow Law entry and didn't see Davis-Bacon in there. It doesn't seem to fit in. The racist effect is a side effect. It was supported by Southern representatives for this reason, but that isn't the primary effect. Today, more people of color benefit from Davis Bacon. Also, if you ask a minority worker if they would rather work making less than a white worker, or the same, they would state they would like the same. We view the racism as part of the hiring process. If the Davis Bacon law, by setting a high price, causes an employer to think "I'd never pay a minority that much", it's the employer that's racist. If an employer hires on minorities at a lower wage, that's not "fighting racism" -- that's taking advantage of racism. We workers lower our wages because we need to avoid debt and poverty, but we don't enjoy it, and given the chance to earn the same, that's what we want. People who say Davis Bacon is racist don't know what racism is. 76.172.121.132 (talk) 00:22, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

---

Quoting directly from Peter Philips' report on Prevailing Wages in Kentucky : Race—Some claim that prevailing wage laws were originally Jim Crow laws designed to keep blacks out of construction. There is no evidence to support this in the case of Kentucky. Nor does it square with what we know about those who supported the early federal and state laws. The first federal law in 1868 was passed by the same Republican Congress that enacted the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution—the legal bases for equal rights in this country. The first state law was declared constitutional by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan—the leading judicial critic of Jim Crow laws in his day. The current federal law was vigorously supported by NY Republican Congressman Fiorello LaGuardia who subsequently, as mayor of New York, played a strong supportive role in bringing Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Critics nonetheless claim that prevailing wage laws keep blacks and other minorities off public construction. They claim that blacks are less skilled and prevailing wage rates require that contractors staff public construction with their best workers. So, because blacks are second rate, they are kept off the job. But the claim that black construction workers are less capable is unsupported. An econometric analysis of the relationship between prevailing wage regulations and the presence of blacks in construction fails to find support for this claim.

Furthermore, in states with prevailing wage laws, the proportion of minorities in construction apprenticeship programs reflect the percentage of minorities in those states’ populations. In contrast, in states that do not have prevailing wage laws, minorities are under-represented in construction apprenticeships. In states without prevailing wage regulations there are 18% to 19% fewer minorities in construction apprenticeship than one would expect from those states’ minority populations. The probable reason for this divergence in representation is the size of apprenticeship programs. Under collective bargaining, apprenticeship programs are typically multi-employer programs of considerable size. Many merit shop apprenticeship programs are single-employer programs with only two or three apprentices. Affirmative action regulations in apprenticeship only apply to programs of five or more apprentices. So union apprenticeship programs almost always fall under regulations prohibiting discrimination, while many open shop apprenticeship programs do not. Finally, when it comes to graduating minorities from construction apprenticeship programs, the graduation rates are much higher under collective bargaining. Only 18% of minorities in merit shop apprenticeship programs graduate from those programs. Thus, minority apprentices are heavily under-represented in those states that do not have prevailing wage regulations. And if those minorities are in programs organized by merit shop contractors, the odds of those few ever turning out as journeymen and women are grim.

Too much talking past one another

Can we agree to these points?

1. The law, while passed during the Jim Crow era, is not directly a Jim Crow law. Jim Crow laws were passed, mostly in the Old South, as a means of differentiating treatment of Negroes (to use the contemporary term from that era). Davis-Bacon is a national law which was primarily intended to stop migratory workers, not simply non-unionized local workers.

2. That migratory labor was primarily African American because this happened to be during a phase of the Great Migration, in which black men and women were getting out of the Jim Crow South and heading to the West and the Northeast. This was well known to the Southerners of the time, who had begun employing a variety of tactics to slow it down since at least the labor shortage precipitated by WWI. Among other things, some jurisdictions required labor recruiters from the North to register, pay for a license, and secure the permission of 10 or so local businessmen. (I doubt a single one of them ever obtained such a license.) The migration probably did not go unnoticed by the white workers in the North, especially during The Depression. Modern ignorance of the Migration does not mean they were ignorant of it at the time.

3. The law had a differential impact on black workers because at that time, (a) most unions did not permit black members, regardless of whether they were in the Jim Crow region, and (b) black migrants from the agrarian South (sharecroppers) did not come with the requisite industrial/construction skills. These differences are described in detail in the cited Bernstein articles (references 2 and 4 at the time of this writing), one of which points out that black workers represented something like 45% of the unskilled workers despite being only 10% or so of the population. This was a law that worked against unskilled workers generally, in much the same way that literacy tests disfranchised both illiterate black and white citizens, but whose effects fell disproportionately on black citizens. They were generally unfair, but pointedly racist in origin and intent.

By the way, if your choice is between unemployment on the one hand, and employment at lower than the wages of the union you can't join on the other, most would choose the latter despite the unfairness. To say that Davis-Bacon was not racist at the time of its passage because it did not produce the ideal outcome is not only a non sequitur, it falls into something like the Nirvana fallacy (in response to the anonymous commenter above who should look up "institutional racism").

4. The situation is different today. Since the time of passage, the CIO split off from the AFL and allowed African Americans to join its unions. When they recombined in the 50s, a new era had begun: Jim Crow was on the wane, and African Americans were well represented in the skilled trades. Today, the racial motivation argument for allowing the law to persist seems less relevant. However, it does appear to have been true at the time of passage. Why did Bayard Rustin feel the need to deny it in 1971 if this is just a recent argument (as the current article implies)? The debate over whether the law is fair, constitutional, discriminatory, pro-union, etc., is separate from the circumstances and motivation that led to its passage. A person who favors the law as it stands should not be labeled a racist for that reason, but a reasonable person should also recognize that the law was racist in effect if not intent at the time of passage. Ehusman (talk) 22:14, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

References

NPOV tag placed pending revisions to correct bias

This article needs a series of revisions and additions to correct bias throughout.

- Coming here to learn about the history and practical effects of Davis-Bacon, I was perplexed to find so much effort devoted to contradicting charges that D-B was at least partly racially motivated (which is clear from the record) and no mention of the position that the practical effect of Davis-Bacon's "prevailing wage" requirement is to enforce union pay scales for government-funded projects. In fact, the article says nothing of how Davis-Bacon's "prevailing wages" and union wage scales are related, and what this implies for project costs, even though that has been a central area of debate over the Act since it was passed.

- Author bias is obvious in the attempt to blunt criticism of Davis-Bacon as at least partially racially motivated by emphasizing that the bill's co-sponsor was a Republican, and the bill was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican President. Does that somehow legitimize it as minority-friendly? A Republican can't have a racially discriminatory motivation? This does not change the intent of the bill's authors or many of its supporters, both in and out of government. For instance, the AFL, which discriminated against blacks at the time, was behind it: "This type of legislation has been agitated and urged for many years and has the united support of all elements of organized labor, and particularly that great, progressive, and constructive labor organization, the American Federation of Labor." (SOURCE from http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-017.html: Congressional Record, February 28, 1931, p. 6,516 (remarks of Representative McCormack); Ibid., p. 6,520 (remarks of Representative Zihlman); See Armand J. Thieblot, Jr., The Davis-Bacon Act (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975), pp. 8-9)

Since "prevailing wages" literally meant union wages (because of Dept. of Labor regulations that required following union wage scales in any area where labor was 30 percent or more unionized) and since Davis-Bacon included a provision against hiring unskilled laborers who were not union apprentices, contractors defaulted to hiring union workers -- from unions that excluded blacks. Experts from the opposing side of the debate contend Davis-Bacon was discriminatory when devised and may continue to have the effect of suppressing minority employment in construction trades on government-funded projects. (SOURCES: http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-017.html, http://mailman.lls.edu/pipermail/election-law/2005-February/006394.html)

- In any event, the debate over the race issue is certainly not the only or the complete story on Davis-Beacon. Just as important in modern times is the claim that the bill protects union jobs and raises costs by making union pay scales a standard for contractors on public works projects. From an article on FindLaw: "In most of California, the published prevailing wage rates are the union wage rates for commercial and engineering construction work for governmental projects. These rates are often significantly in excess of wages for workers employed in private residential and commercial construction." (SOURCE: http://library.findlaw.com/2003/Aug/11/132981.html) From the WSJ on 1/21/2009: "A 2008 study by Suffolk University and the Beacon Hill Institute examined local wage data for construction workers and found that the Department of Labor estimates for the 'prevailing wage' in cities are about 22% above the actual wages paid in these cities." (SOURCE: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123249762587900401.html)

- The article includes numerous uncited statements that are pivotal to its general slant: "critics... flatly dismiss the conservative claim that (the act) had Jim Crow origins." What critics, and what qualifies as "flatly"? Another clue as to the author's bias is a reference to "the great Civil Rights Activist Bayard Rustin," who "forcefully dismissed putative concerns about the racial impacts of prevailing wage laws, calling them a divisive distraction from the real task of building alliances between construction workers of all races." The term "great" is a de facto neutrality violation (as inappropriate in Wikipedia as "the great political leader Ronald Reagan" or "the great consumer advocate Ralph Nader," both matters of opinion); the rest of the sentence talks vaguely of "building alliances" without explanation or proper attribution, leaving it sounding like a union orgnizing brochure. Fine in other contexts, but unclear here.

- Finally, many of the article's claims are not only uncited, they're unfounded. For instance, if the legislative back-and-forth over Davis-Bacon "reflects a desire by Congress to reserve jobs on federal projects for local workers, who nationwide faced epidemic unemployment," then why have efforts to repeal it since the Depression ended repeatedly failed? Certainly the "epidemic unemployment" argument wasn't valid. Arguably, it has become a means of keeping wages higher and limiting labor-cost competition. The claim that Davis-Bacon reserves jobs for "local workers" doesn't add up either, since the Act doesn't require that workers maintain "local" residency or that they've gone to high school locally -- only that they make the "prevailing" (read: union-established) wage.

This isn't an argument about underlying merits, because that's just more POV, albeit from the other side. It's a challenge to make the article a neutral presentation of the Act and issues surrounding it, with clear attribution of claims. Simplemeasures (talk • contribs) 00:44, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I concur on all of these points. See also my suggestions above. Ehusman (talk) 22:20, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Davis-Bacon Act

The article about the Davis-Bacon Act does not say whether the act requires union wage scales to be used. Edward C. Sullivan, President, Building and Construction Trades, AFL-CIO, said in a letter on-line [3] that DBA does not require union wages to be paid. The Institute for Justice [4] states that most often the "prevailing wages" correspond to "union wages". This Wikipedia article does not address that issue. As such the article seems to be incomplete and miss an important part of current controversies as opposed to whether it is a Jim Crow law or not. 18:44, 6 February 2009 (UTC)]] comment added by USAFRadDoc (talk • contribs) 08:12, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions

I think that the article could use the following cited info:

1. It should say which agency determines the prevailing wages in a geographic area. The Department of Defense is the lead agency in making wage determinations. This information should be included brecause the common misconception is that DB sets the wages (it doesn't) and that those wages are union scale, when in fact they are the wages that prevail locally.

2. I think the lines about the information about the legislative intent of the authors should be removed. It doesn't serve any purpose other than to foster debate, because everyone has a different interpretation. This is obvious from some people trying to say it was a Jim Crow law, versus others trying to say that it was put in place to ensure fair employment of union labor, etc... The only way this would work is if the article included cites to direct quotes to the bill's authors. I think it would be better if the article stated the purpose of the act, which is to ensure that those working on federally funded construction projects are paid locally prevailing wages.

3. I also think that the article should dileneate the difference betwen DB and the Service Contract Act. Moreover, the article should point out that MOST, but not all jobs on a federally funded construction project are covered. There are in fact a few jobs that are exempted.

Wildcard6 (talk) 11:38, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

A couple of errors

The the reference link #8 is missing form the reference list. Link #9 is a nonworking link. Brian Pearson (talk)

Edits 8/19/12 to 'History' and 'Controversies': Organization and Objectivity

All: I made several edits to these sections, primarily for organization and objectivity.

Summary of edits:

1-'Controversies' changed to 'historical controversy': the only controversy mentioned here was the discussion of race as motivation for the Act. Perhaps we can add modern controversies too. Either is fine, however.

2-'History' condensed, content re racist intent moved to 'historical controversy'

3-Many small stylistic edits for objectivity - all substantive arguments for/against remain.

4-Improved diction and readability

5-Added citation to conservative opponent to support claim re opponents of the Act, balance.

Please discuss any changes before any undo's. Thank you! Greg Guy (talk) 22:29, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Major Rewrite 29 Dec 12

As noted above, there were many problems with this article as it stood:

• NPOV - it appeared that the act was mostly noted for its racism and had no other notable features, good or bad. I have put the issue of racism in context and moved it below (away) from the main body of the article. A strong case could be made that, regardless of the intent of the authors, DBA might not harm minorities (especially African-Americans) if they were well represented in unions. That is much more true today than ever before; it is probably not true of undocumented workers, but that is another controversy. The Ruskin article is worth reviewing.
• The article didn't actually describe the "history and practical effects", i.e. which agency is responsible for determining prevailing wage rates. I have addressed these by including sections on amendments and suspensions as well as practical operation.
• The article emphasized the racist controversy while putting the larger controversies - intra-agency infighting, cost increases, and union ties - in the background. I have tried to treat all of these fairly and with a little more realistic emphasis. Mostly, the agency's own audits continue to show that their methodology is poor, resulting in artificially biased and perhaps fraudulently manipulated wage determinations. Those seem much more serious that the racism which may no longer be relevant.
• The article contained a number of uncited and unfounded statements. I have tried to find a citation from a reputable source for every statement made. YMMV. The union materials that I reviewed were almost useless, as they contain no hint of nuance and could uncharitably be characterized as intentionally misleading.
• The article didn't state whether union wages were required in the determination of prevailing wage rates. They weren't required, but were (and in some cases, still are) frequently used, as noted in various places throughout the article as it now stands.
• I attempted to differentiate between DBA requirements and Service Contract requirements and quickly discovered that this is a serious debate that continues inside the bureaucracy and has occasionally boiled over.

The article could now use some work in making it more readable (breaking up the "wall of text" appearance in some sections). Also, I cannot figure out why some of the citations with offsite links work perfectly well, but others appear to be broken in some way (Getek, Beacon Hill, HRD 79-18) - it appears that the renderer has left out the "|" character when building the link out of the title and the URL address, but it worked perfectly well with other citations. Finally, it might be worthwhile bringing in some of the data that show how inaccurate the wage determinations are. The Colorado DOT paper, the Beacon Hill paper, and the post-Oklahoma fraud hearings had substantial data sets, but I was not able to retrieve credible counter sources for balance, so I omitted them. Ehusman (talk) 20:16, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

BG19bot fixed the broken links! Ehusman (talk) 03:09, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Assessment

@Ehusman: Per your request at Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/Assessment/Requests, I have rated the article as B class. It is very well written and sourced with all the above concerns having been addressed thoroughly. It possibly could pass a GA with some small prose tweaks. Winner 42 Talk to me! 19:37, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

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