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PRIORITIES

2010 State Legislative Priorities

Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) is committed to generating a strong economy by providing:
Training, Safety, and Market opportunities for commercial and industrial construction workers. Click here for your own copy of our 2010 Priorities.

Our legislative goals focus on:

Eliminating barriers to open competition
    State funded construction projects require the payment of “prevailing wages,” artificially inflating the cost of state construction by 7 to 10 percent. In no other sector of the economy does the government try to mandate wages. The system is cumbersome, rarely matching the unique skills of individual workers, and costing millions of dollars in monitoring costs. A non-partisan, non-profit policy research organization recently concluded that eliminating this burden would allow 10% more in road and building construction with no offset in quality or safety. Additionally, prevailing wage often requires work hours and labor divisions that just don’t exist in today’s market. Prevailing wage in Minnesota should be repealed or radically overhauled at minimum.

Ensuring that all workers can benefit from public work
    Project labor agreements are imposed by construction owners, requiring workers to adopt union work rules, pay into union benefit plans without vesting those employees, and requiring workers to go through a union hiring hall. Seventy-five percent of construction workers in Minnesota choose to not affiliate with a union. The government shouldn’t discriminate against them on public projects. We need to keep the state ban on project labor agreements.

Efficiently funding road and building construction projects
    Right now, construction input costs of steel, concrete, lumber, and labor are dropping dramatically. Government can capitalize on this opportunity by investing in road and building construction infrastructure. These investments for the long-term can be purchased cheaply, while keeping local workers employed. The state should seize this opportunity and create a win for the state, workers, the community, and the economy by passing a strong bonding bill.

Prohibiting employers from soliciting kickbacks from employees.
    A growing trend in construction is the collection of employee wages on an hourly basis to provide kickbacks to employers. This process decreases the take-home pay of employees and pads the wallets of contractors. This is especially troubling on state prevailing wage projects that guarantee a minimum salary for workers, collection of these funds should not lower wages below the prevailing wage. Because these funds are commingled from private and public work, it erodes all wages across the industry, and contractors on state-funded work should be absolutely prohibited from accepting these kickbacks.

Protect worker privacy
   Public employees enjoy privacy rights regarding their salaries and home addresses. But employees of private firms contracting with state and local government do not. These employees did not sign up for public employment and simply work on the jobs that are assigned. They deserve at least the same level of privacy as a public employee. support our efforts to reform data privacy laws.

If you have any questions, please call or email Phil Raines.