CHARLESTON, W.Va. — There will be no prevailing wage, setting a minimum for those working on large state-funded construction projects in West Virginia, beginning Wednesday.
The wage was set to expire Tuesday night as WorkForce West Virginia continued work to implement a new prevailing wage calculation method created in state law earlier this year.
Steve White, executive director of the Affiliated Construction Trades Foundation, saw the prevailing wage as a “protection” for workers.
Without it, “That means that we’ve opened the door for a decline of wages, unfair competition for our local contractors, imported labor, perhaps. Who knows what will be? It’s not a very pretty picture,” White said.
In an attempt to more accurately determine the wage, the new state law moved calculations of the prevailing wage from the state Division of Labor to WorkForce West Virginia with input from economists at both West Virginia University and Marshall University.
Republican legislative leaders opted not to extend a deadline to September, allowing more time for that work, because of concerns about how the law was being implemented. They’d argued data from the U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics should have been included as a factor, de-emphasizing the previous survey method.
In June, though, WorkForce sent out surveys to more than 5,200 contractors and other businesses.
On Tuesday’s MetroNews “Talkline,” White said he was waiting to see the results.
Overall, “We want to make sure that the local contractors and workers have a level playing field and ability to compete on their skills, their ability to do the job, quality and all of those things. We want to keep those tax dollars here,” he said.
Even though not everyone in his organization supports all parts of the new law, “We’re going to comply with it. We’re going to do our best with it and then we’re going to, hopefully, get on with life,” White said.
“We don’t like being in the middle of a political war and debate where our contractors and our workers, for politics purposes, are being attacked.”
Up until Wednesday, the prevailing wage, which included minimums for benefits and overtime, was in place for state-funded construction projects above a $500,000 threshold.
In all, 32 states have prevailing wage laws.