If off-shoring of manufacturing burns you up, so should the elimination of prevailing wages in construction
For years we've been hearing about the devastation caused by the off-shoring of manufacturing capacity. Families that were firmly in the middle class experienced dramatic declines in their standards of living as their jobs were shipped off to a far off location where the work would be done at a fraction of the cost because the CEOs could pay workers a pittance while evading the costs of keeping the air and water clean. When the left-behind workers found new jobs, the wages and benefits were nowhere near what they had lost. As families became poorer, communities suffered as their coffers emptied because residents had far less to spend back in town. Entire industries and the technical know-how of their workforce have disappeared in the United States.
All of this has rightfully made many Americans angry. But while the most noticeable impacts of off-shoring have been concentrated in a few states in the industrial Midwest, the elimination of prevailing wages in construction has the potential to bring these problems to California. At first blush the comparison between construction and manufacturing does not seem to fit. However a deeper look at the construction industry, its hiring practices, its skill base, and the stabilizing role of prevailing wages shows that the comparison is right on target.
The second in a series on the AFL-CIO's job creation proposals.
As part of the AFL-CIO's five-point plan for job creation, we're making concrete proposals to address the nation's immediate jobs crisis while keeping an eye on creating a sustainable economy in the future.
Investment in rebuilding the nation's infrastructure can put millions of people to work now and improve our country for the long term. The United States has some $2.2 trillion in unmet infrastructure needs. That's a lot of work that needs to be done, at a time when 26 million people are unemployed or underemployed.
We strive to be, if anything, a participatory space around here, and I've had a question come to my inbox that is very much deserving of our attention.
To make a long story short, our questioner wants to know why, on the one hand, despite the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, also known as the "stimulus"), unemployment in the construction industry continues to increase, and, on the other hand, why there is such a giant disparity, on a state-by-state basis, in the cost of saving a job?
They're great questions, and, having done a bit of research, I think I have some cogent answers.
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