Sunday, January 15, 2017

Why Davis Bacon Projects Need To Be Stopped

By Frank Collins


The controversy surrounding labor wages has necessitated the creation of more enlightened laws. One such law was passed in the year 1931, which regulated wages for labor contracted to work on government construction works. The main provision of the act was for contractors to give the prevailing standard pay to construction laborers and mechanics in their employ.

Nowadays, the bill is still in use for HUD, the department that addresses mass housing in cities and other places. Construction outfits do not have much use for Davis Bacon projects and avoid them because of they are not good for their income statements. The act has been the center of raging debates on how salaries are supposed to be set up under the law.

There are also the so called Related Acts which are a set of provisions within the bill for relevant government support through loans, insurance and grants. Because of the way government red tape works, companies do not get these quickly and therefore must catch up with a need for much more finances to survive. These Acts were slated to let companies also have some kind of compensation.

The act was supposed to have made affordable housing a byword for families in the lower income brackets. The companies all found a way to make the housing units quickly, with less concern for quality during the construction. While they have problems, their workers also have many more, even today, with many gaps in things like health benefits and other areas.

Government guarantees or underwrites a failed system of providing affordable housing to income earners in the lower brackets. Today, a lot of people who are beneficiaries of this system still take the housing units that are offered. The choice is to spend more on much better built apartments or homes.

The delivery of services along social lines is not a strong suit of the US government. Davis Bacon further exacerbates this weakness in the way it is unable to deliver reliably on the services that it promises to provide. This makes for something that the government needs to answer for and a constant sticking point between it and the population.

People who are enrolled in the HUD programs do not have much of a choice. Housing provided by the private sector at least doubles the money needed for having a home that will not leak when it rains. Owners of these units have the privilege of spending more out of pocket for installs to improve their homes.

The GAO in 1979 made a report in relation to the bill and how it is no longer serviceable and needs to be repealed. There are several stated causes, but all of these were based on critical analysis of services. It did not mention how the act has become a way to discriminate against African Americans.

Many states in the nation have also passed their versions of the law in support of national laws. The legislation, however, are not effective in that political blocks have also come up with laws that make them so. There will come a time when congress and the administration will have to make a new act to replace it.




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