Prevailing wages?

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dwellselectric

dwellselectric

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Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Okay can someone please help me out with something. My boss and I have been doing electrical work for the town and we did two jobs that I am questioning. First job is we installed a much larger generator at the police station and the second job was we had a emergency service change at the town landfill. Now I was never told about prevailing wages til I went for a job at the local 223 and the president was telling me that he thinks that I should of been getting prevailing wages. Does anyone have any insight on this should I of been?
 
Depends on who's money paid for the project. There's no way to know. I do a lot of city work, and little to none of it is prevailing wage work.
 
dSilanskas said:
The town pays for the projects that we do
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You really gotta look up your state's own prevailing wage law. In my state, PA, it doesn't even kick in until the contract amount is 25 grand or more.
 
You could go to the Town Hall and ask who handled the project for the town. It may be an engineering firm. Then ask that person if prevailing wages were supposed to be paid.
 
mdshunk said:
I do a lot of city work, and little to none of it is prevailing wage work.
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thats kinda interesting. here if i even change a lamp for the city its pw.
i guess i took it for granted that its like that everywhere.

learn something new every day
 
Some states do not have prevailing wage. North Carolina is a "right to work" state, and public or government funded work is handled just like private work. You make your base wage no matter what. That is why I moved back to New York state, so I wouldn't starve to death.

gerry
 
Here, not only is the government work prevailing wage, work in private developments that receive incentives that are funded from tax dollars are also prevailing wage jobs.
Don
 
not only does the type of funding have to be considered, but if the land was donated from a public entity or sold at a discount from it real value. the funding also doesn't have to be 100% to kick in the pw requirement. this law needs to be watched very closely by the awarding entity. if it not then someone can ask for certified payroll and if in a timely manner could result in the offending contractor to have to pay restitution. this could be payment for under paying wages, per diem, etc. this should be for the fair outcome of bidding the job at pw and then not paying it. if you bid public works you should read up on the subject.
 
sheldon_ace said:
Some states do not have prevailing wage. North Carolina is a "right to work" state, and public or government funded work is handled just like private work. You make your base wage no matter what. That is why I moved back to New York state, so I wouldn't starve to death.

gerry
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If you do construction work on federal property and it meets the minimum contract dollar amount (used to be $25,000) it is PW. That would include North Carolina. The law is called the Davis-Bacon Act. In some states it's a moot point. Where unions are not strong the PW is sometimes lower than what people will work for.
 
mkgrady said:
If you do construction work on federal property and it meets the minimum contract dollar amount (used to be $25,000) it is PW. That would include North Carolina. The law is called the Davis-Bacon Act. In some states it's a moot point. Where unions are not strong the PW is sometimes lower than what people will work for.
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In Illinois the PW generally exceeds what most people are paid, even people in the trade. Every now and then the papers do a story about it, but nothing changes. The state props the PW up every year. In some areas, it exceeds the normal union wage by 20-30%.
 
Bob,
In Illinois the PW generally exceeds what most people are paid, even people in the trade.
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I have never seen that. I just checked the state published rates for my area and they are an exact match for the union contract in the area.
Don
 
petersonra said:
In Illinois the PW generally exceeds what most people are paid, even people in the trade. Every now and then the papers do a story about it, but nothing changes. The state props the PW up every year. In some areas, it exceeds the normal union wage by 20-30%.
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Maybe you saw that non-union workers that are paid the PW receive more in their paycheck than the union worker. That often happens when nothing is deducted for health, pension, dues, etc. If the non-union worker doesn't have these deductions he goes home with a bigger check.
 
That often happens when nothing is deducted for health, pension, dues, etc. If the non-union worker doesn't have these deductions he goes home with a bigger check.
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It is correct that the PW does include the benefits and they must be paid in some manner, either on the check or as benefits. However, at least around here, the benefits for union members are not in the form of deductions, they are paid by the contractor in addition to the wages on the check. In my area, they amount to ~$23.00 per hour over the wage rate of $36.10, so an employee with no benefits would have to receive $59.10 per hour on the check on a PW job.
Don
 
don_resqcapt19 said:
Bob,

I have never seen that. I just checked the state published rates for my area and they are an exact match for the union contract in the area.
Don
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Yup, same here and it's been that way since it started many years ago.

The confusion usually comes in, when a non union contractor, pays out the benifits in the check, and a union contractor banks the benifits for the employees fund, the non union employee sees the difference as extra money in his check, not as money that he should apply to his personal benifits fund.
 
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