Posted on 05/31/2006 11:18:36 AM PDT by KC Burke
“While Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) commends the Senate for approving the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (S. 2611), we are very concerned that this important legislation will vastly expand antiquated and wasteful Davis-Bacon Act wage laws," said Kirk Pickerel, ABC president and CEO. “We fully support the underlying principles of this legislation and applaud the Senate for working to reform our nation’s broken immigration system. However, Associated Builders and Contractors cannot support a measure that recklessly extends Davis-Bacon Act provisions to temporary workers on private construction projects, where the act does not traditionally apply.
“The Davis-Bacon Act is a depression-era wage subsidy law whose time has run out. Davis-Bacon Act wage rules increase the cost of public construction projects anywhere from 5 percent to 38 percent above what the project would have cost in the private sector. S. 2611 would expand these inflationary wage rules into the private sector, a steep cost that will ultimately be borne by U.S. taxpayers.
“ABC will work closely with House and Senate conferees in the coming weeks to ensure that these antiquated provisions are removed during conference negotiations and that vital reforms for our nation’s immigration system are put into place in a timely manner.”
Editors Note: Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) is a national association representing 23,000 merit shop construction and construction-related firms in 79 chapters across the United States.
This is a item meant to help kill non-union light commercial and residential price advantages and advance union control in the segment of the market they haven't had much of a percentage in for decades.
While I don't see much light commercial being done by Hispanic immigrants at below market wages, I imagine it does exist in residential in certain areas. But, this is not the solution.
Davis Bacon involves "certified payrolls" and all sorts of government reporting and penalties. Government will control all private construction to a much larger degree than they do now.
How ironic. Davis-Bacon was originally drafted to stop blacks from getting jobs...........
Now everyone can have that skilled tradesman that makes $32.00 and costs $71.00 per hour in selling price work on their next kitchen remodel.
One of the few government acts that did what they meant it to do. And the Democrats still support it. And African-Americans still get screwed by it. And still vote 90%+ for the Democrats.
ABC also doesn't want to see a source of cheap labor go away which hurts profits....
I am all for the free market and perhaps one of the unintended consequences of artificial wage controls is the hiring of illegals. But, ABC's and other trade organizations members who have broken the law need to be held to account.
Davis-Bacon needs to go the way of the 1898, 3% federal excise tax on long distance phone calls.
Ted Kennedy worked on this bill. Ted Kennedy was JFK, Jr's uncle. JFK, Jr dated Daryl Hannah. Daryl Hannah was in Splash with Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks was in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon. Kevin's distant relative, Davis Bacon fought in the Civil War.
;-)
ping
There are union contractors that hire clean-up crews of illegals just like open shop contractors.
Most contractors can't tell when an immigrant worker being hired is illegal or legal. There wasn't any way to check SSN numbers by web until just recently. Most small firms don't yet know how it works. In fact, the biggest number of Civil Rights complaints to contractors is on the issue of documentation or immigrant status impacting employment. So many construction contractors are damned if they avoid the hispanics and damned if they don't.
The issue here is that the leftists in the Senate are trying to apply the Davis-Bacon act to private work which will drive up the price of all construction work including homes by a huge percentage and using this bill as a wedge tool to do it.
ABC is a constituent of the OBL. They cavort with the Dems and RINO's to get access to more illegals, but then find out that the Dems find a special way to screw them. ABC probably is looking now for the conservative Republicans to save them from the bad Democrats. If you sleep with Kennedy, ABC, don't be surprised with what you wake up with.
Their position on immigration:
The Senate is scheduled to act on comprehensive immigration reform early in 2006, and all prominent reform measures in the Senate is comprehensive, taking into account border security, internal enforcement and a legal channel through which to secure foreign workers.
Applying a 15% cost impact to the 80% of the 900 Billion in annual construction not subject to the Davis-Bacon act prevailing wage programs currently means that US construction across the board could increase in cost by 50 to 100 Billion if the impact can be estimated at all.
I know, I know, we contractors are all polluters, union shills, non-union scabs, crooks, shoddy project builders, etc, etc. Forget all that for a moment and ask yourself, do I want to see an instant impact on real estate, housing and development that is on the order of 5 to 20% hit all at once?
MESSAGE TO THEM - With due respect, this press release statement is quite wrong:
“We fully support the underlying principles of this legislation and applaud the Senate
for working to reform our nation’s broken immigration system."
The Senate just passed an awful and very flawed bill that does not in any way 'reform'
anything. If anything, that bill would make many things in our immigration system
far more broken. Yet strangely, you feel the need to praise this awful bill while
complaining about one of the many dangerous and
destructive provisions in this bill.
That is like complaining about cold soup on the last night on the Titanic!
Leaving aside the obvious flaws of the massive legalization-to-citizenship,
aka amnesty, of 10 million or more illegal immigrants, and the potential
(Heritage estimate) of 60+ million legal immigrants, there remains a host of dangerous
and foolish provisions in the Senate bill that make the whole bill totally unworkable:
- The bill invites fraud by forbidding the use of data on applications in investigations, and allowing
for "difficulties encountered by aliens in obtaining evidence of employment", a signal
for wink-and-nod fraud in applications
- The bill has a loophole that forbids local law enforcement to hold people for civil immigration infractions,
making the opportunistic detention of criminal aliens harder ( a terrorist loophole)
- It has provisions tampering with the immigration appeals courts, so they are less effective and more litigious
- An AgsJobs section with pitifully weak job requirements and 'no immigration lawyer left behind' provisions,
which requires lawyers to write applications and provides for taxpayer-funded lawyers for filing immigration appeals.
- Allowances for self-sponsorship and for conversion of temporary guest worker visas to
permanant residency status, that make a mockery of the "temporary guest worker" label
- Over-regulation of wage and employment contracts, not just with Davis-Bacon rules imposed for some workers,
but also with requirements on "Just Cause" firing and the Govt intrusion into making determinations
about specific labor markets and industries, a political decision ripe for corruption and misjudgement
- An odious requirement to advise Mexico prior to building any fencing
- AgJobs has 'no immigration lawyer left behind' provisions: Provides for taxpayer-funded lawyers for
filing alien adjudication appeals, and requires lawyers to write applications
- An employment verification system that is simply unworkable; Senator Cornyn explained it in Senate debate as a
"system that is designed to fail"; it creates Federal liabilities opposed by DHS Secretary Chertoff,
requires an impossible standard of accuracy to be mandatory, and that won't be operational for years
It's important for you to send a message to Congress to not just fix this one provision,
but to fix the many other flawed provisions in the bill. Better yet - tell Congress to throw the
whole stinking Senate bill overboard. It's an awful, unworkable, shocking mess of bad law. It's 100% bad.
After they chuck the Senate bill, the conference should write a bill that covers the critical needs in immigration:
*
Secure the border first
*
Set up an employment verification system that works
*
Streamline deportation and immigration law to reduce litigation in deportations
*
Involve State and local law enforcement in immigration law enforcement
All of that is embodied in the House bill today, HR4437,
and should be readily adopted by the conference committee.
Desired modifications to the bill can go from there.
Such a common-ground bill would be a good ‘down payment’ on immigration
reform that deals with the immediate immigration crisis and helps move us
forward to address remaining immigration issues.
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