Vice President Kamala Harris Touts 'Raise' for Union Workers on Federal Construction Projects
Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Philadelphia Tuesday to highlight the administration's new rule to raise wage standards for construction workers performing federally funded jobs as part of the broader "Bidenomics" push.
“We applaud the Biden-Harris Administration for its relentless commitment to invest in America and for upholding laws to pay American workers fairly as part of that commitment. Today’s DOL final rule strengthens federal prevailing wage regulations and restores the law to its original intent after it has been watered down over the last 40-plus years. This ruling is a win for ALL construction workers, both union and non-union, for good and fair contractors, and for America’s taxpayers," said North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) President Sean McGarvey in a statement.
Speaking at the Finishing Trades Institute, a union training and education department, Harris highlighted the new rule that updates the prevailing wage regulations under the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts (DBRA), which determines the hourly wage for many union workers. This change will impact more than 1 million construction workers, most of whom do not have a college degree, senior administration officials said Monday.
"But here's the problem. Those standards have not been updated for 40 years. And as a result, many workers are paid much less than they deserve, much less than the value of their work. And not just by little, in some cases by thousands of dollars a year. And that is wrong, obviously, and completely unacceptable in the Biden-Harris administration," Harris said.
Some Republicans were quick to criticize the new rule. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., is the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and said in a statement that DBRA would "inflate the cost of federal construction projects to the detriment of American taxpayers" and "drastically inflate the price of construction." Cassidy said the regulations would separate wage calculations based on urban and rural regions, which, he said, would disproportionally inflate the cost of projects in rural areas.