Do Prevailing Wages Really Prevail? Should Prevailing Wage Laws Be Repealed?
Prevailing Wage Laws Most Americans have probably never heard of prevailing wage laws, or if they have, have a vague sense that they are harmless and dont have anything to do with them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Prevailing wage laws ought to be of immediate concern to all Americans because they have a direct impact on their quality of life and the taxes they pay. Most prevailing wage laws apply to government contracts for construction. The best known is the federal Davis-Bacon Act. About half the states have similar little Davis-Bacon laws. There is also a federal prevailing wage law for service contracts. These depression era laws require that workers on government contracts be paid wages supposedly prevailing in the community where the work is being done. The stated reason for prevailing wage laws was to prevent government contractors from undermining local wage rates by importing workers from low wage areas. If that was all there was to it and if the wages specified w
