Highly Skilled Workers Key To Katrina Reconstruction

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It isn’t hard to figure out when this Administration is trying to bamboozle you. Any mom or dad ought to be able to recognize it; it looks just like your kids lined up trying to get you to take them to Chuck E. Cheese. The song and dance on Davis-Bacon and cheap labor for Katrina reconstruction looks and sounds exactly the same.

Earlier I picked up the story from Facing South and posted a series of supposed local editorials that was really just a cut and paste rant against "big labor and big spenders". Then there’s the fiscal responsibility argument, that this band of wild-eyed spenders have suddenly seen the light and are concerned about the increased construction costs to the taxypayer. One of the most outlandish claims I’ve seen is that Davis-Bacon is actually racist. Yep, a letter in the Quad Times makes the claim that Davis-Bacon will be used to force the corporate cronies to hire workers at a higher wage rate and, consequently, only white workers will be hired. There is so much wrong in that statement that it would take a whole other blog post to address.

So there’s the song and dance, but what is the reality? According to an Oct 6 report from the Economic Policy Institute, we would be wise to look at the reconstruction of the Santa Monica Freeway that collapsed during the Northridge earthquake. Governor Wilson waived many regulations in order to speed construction, including procurement regulations, contracting statutes, environmental and permitting reviews, overtime, and more. What he did not do is waive contract bidding or prevailing wage laws.

Governor Wilson chose this route for the reconstruction of the freeway, and many more projects, because the economic loss due to that freeway alone was calculated at a whopping million dollars a day. 5 companies bid on the reconstruction, the lowest for $14.9 million at 140 days. The decision of the contractor to use highly skilled and highly paid labor enabled him to complete the work in just 66 days and receive a $14.5 million bonus, another feature of Governor Wilson’s reconstruction process. Even at $30 million, the economic boon to L.A. was well worth the cost.

The Bush Administration, in suspending prevailing wage, is really operating under a penny wise, pound foolish approach. The casinos in the Gulf have learned the lesson of the California earthquakes, labor shortages that have occurred have been attributed to the higher wages they are paying in order to rebuild quickly. They are looking at the broader economic picture, just as we all should. To put the freeway project in context, it would be as if a major New Orleans artery were opened on Nov 21, just in time for the holiday season. I can’t think of a better gift to the people of New Orleans, unfortunately I don’t think it is one they are going to get.

LINKS:
http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?view=plink&id=1425