El Pasoans tell state of inequality in wages
Gary Scharrer
Austin Bureau
El Paso Times 03-19-02
AUSTIN - One way Texas can help lift the border out of chronic poverty is to pay higher wages for government construction projects in border counties, El Paso County Attorney Jose RodrÌguez and others told a state Senate subcommittee Monday.
The Senate Business and Commerce Committee is examining wage disparities that, for example, pay a carpenter $18.60 an hour for a government job in Austin, compared with $7.96 in El Paso and Laredo.
El Paso has gone into an "economic dive" during the past 50 years, the Rev. James Hall, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Church and co-chairman of the El Paso Interreligious Sponsoring Organization, told the committee. In 1950, the average El Pasoan earned $104 for every $100 on the national scale, Hall said, and today, the typical El Paso wage has slipped to $57 for every $100 nationally.
Two of every three jobs in El Paso pay less than $10 an hour, which means less than the minimum living wage, Hall said. It's imperative that the public sector lead the way and set a trend for higher wages and benefits, he said.
In an amendment to a bill during the last legislative session, state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, got Texas to require higher pay for state jobs in border counties based on a complex formula of wages for similar work elsewhere in Texas.
The new law has increased the payroll on state highway projects by 3.5 percent in border counties, resulting in a corresponding decrease in road construction, Thomas Bohuslav, director of construction for the Texas Department of Transportation, told the commission. The costs of school construction also will dramatically increase, a spokesman for the association of builders and contractors said.
Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, suggested that Texas taxpayers could save a lot of money if the state simply repealed its prevailing wage law, which now sets minimum wages for government construction projects.
EPISO and its sister organizations have made "living wages" a top issue and are still upset with Gov. Rick Perry for vetoing legislation last year that would have required border-area school districts to pay living wages at school construction sites.
"Any candidate who says they are pro family has to be in favor of living wages," Hall said after the hearing. "We're going to make it an issue in the fall (election campaign)."
The country's four poorest metropolitan areas are on the Texas-Mexico border.
"The state must take steps to reverse the negative economic consequences of maintaining a wage rate system for state public works contracts that discriminates on the basis of regional boundaries and prevents segments of the state from sharing in economic prosperity," RodrÌguez told the committee. "In the end, the state pays for its misguided policy through higher public assistance funding to economically depressed communities."
The state last year, for example, funneled $2.1 billion to school districts in the 14 counties touching the border because of low value tax bases in those property poor communities. It cost the state $621,546,714 to help finance public education in El Paso's nine school districts last year.
Gary Scharrer may be reached at gscharrer@elpasotimes.com