-By Warner Todd Huston
Employees, whether unionized or not, who work for companies that have government contracts make far more per hour than employees who do similar jobs in the same area, a new study finds. This fact shows that government is essentially breaking its compensation own law.
The Service Contract Act of 1965 maintains that employees working for companies with government contracts must make the prevailing wage for their job in the area in which they work.
That means that if a carpet-layer in Peoria, Illinois makes $10.27 per hour, then any company that lays carpet for the government must pay their carpet-layers $10.27 per hour. Seems fair enough, right?
But the study shows that this isn’t happening. These government contractors aren’t making the prevailing wage. In fact, they are making far more than the prevailing wage! And all at the expense to the taxpayers, naturally.
For instance, The Washington Examiner found that, painters in Troy, Michigan make $13.05 per hour, but government contracted painters make a whopping $26.60 per hour.
This is nothing but a giant rip off to the taxpayers.
Now, there isn’t anything wrong with the concept of making sure that government contractors pay a prevailing wage for their region. After all, we don’t want people working for government to be paid less than what everyone else makes. That wouldn’t really be very fair and it may even be a good way to help stop shoddy work.
Still, one could argue that a free market would naturally have some employees making less than a “prevailing wage,” whatever that may be, because of the effects of the free market.
Regardless, the original 1965 law had good intentions. But even if all the law meant to do was to make sure that the government wasn’t getting shoddy work done by unskilled and low paid labor, the fact that taxpayers are getting ripped off worse by having these employees paid so much higher is just as bad.
But, this whole mess is really little else but a payback to Democrat-supporting unions as most of these contractors are unionized labor.
The Examiner has a great chart showing the great disparity in per hour costs taxpayers are expected to absorb compared to similar jobs in the same areas.
Another major problem with this sort of thing is that it skews the true job market in any given area by creating a false job market that is not sustained by real economic forces but created by the redistribution of tax dollars.
Again, this is nothing but Democrats greasing the palms of unions with out tax money.
Just another reason why unions need to be eliminated.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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