PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE: Republican legislators scored significant victories Monday in bids to water down one of their most-criticized targets, the state’s 50-year-old “prevailing wage” law.
The 1961 statute requires that prevailing wages, often called “union wages,” be paid by townships, boroughs and school districts on almost all of their publicly funded office building and road projects — those costing more than $25,000.
“The prevailing wage changes would be a tremendous savings to the taxpayers — hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Rep. Ron Marsico, R-Dauphin, who authored two of the six bills approved Monday by the House Labor and Industry Committee. “Prevailing wages are [construction] union wages, not the market wage” in most counties… (more)
