[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]BG: This is a pretty knee-jerk response on your part. It isn’t as though there are only two choices here: “Living wage” or “undocumented illegals”.
I’ve been doing Military/Federal construction since the late 1980s and I can tell you that Prevailing Wage (Public Works projects) and Union Scale (Commercial/Metro projects) are some of the most overpriced, poorly done and corrupt projects going – the SF Bay Bridge “retrofit” following the Loma Prieta quake being Exhibit A.
These projects are larded with pork, kickbacks and all sorts of “giveaways” to family members, political supporters, etc.
As to “living wage”, well you haven’t lived till you’ve spent $125/hr on a union welder (+ fringes!), whom you don’t even get for a full eight hour work day (due to union work rules, union-mandated breaks and safety meetings).
Costs here, like Chicago and NYC, will skyrocket.[/quote]
So, what is the solution, Allan? Is there a happy medium? I’ve searched many local contractors’ licenses on the CSLB. It seems to be a struggle for a lot of them to keep up their worker’s comp premiums and minimum bond … even if they’ve been licensed for many years. Should the ROP programs just continue to train and turn out students for the trades only to have them compete with unlicensed “contractors” and undocumented immigrants?
In the absence of a prevailing minimum wage for each trade, it becomes a race to the bottom to see who is willing to work cheapest.
