‘Prevailing Wage’ Law Reform Blocked : Politics: Two bills by Sen. Rob Hurtt to slash worker pay in government projects die. Legislator cites savings but labor officials warn of slipshod work.

Rejecting arguments it would save the state more than $300 million a year, a Senate committee on Wednesday scuttled an Orange County lawmaker’s effort to slash wages paid for government projects such as roads and prison construction.

Voting along party lines, Democrats on the Senate Industrial Relations Committee killed two bills by Sen. Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove) designed to reduce the “prevailing wage” paid for government-funded construction work.

Hurtt argued that the savings would prove vital as the budget-strapped state grapples with ways to finance more prison construction, amid expectations that toughened sentencing requirements will flood already crowded lockups.

“It’s unfortunate that the legislators, who support paying a flagman on a road job $42.73 an hour for working on a Sunday, claim in their next breath that we can’t afford to keep dangerous felons in prison,” Hurtt said in a statement after the hearing.

The bills were buffeted by opposition from labor union representatives, who said Hurtt’s proposals would crowd government projects with unskilled labor, driving up costs due to shoddy workmanship. In addition, local governments would be “digging their own grave” because reduced wages would mean less tax revenue for the public sector, said John F. Henning of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.

“Any attempts to dilute wages is against the interests of the workers,” Henning said. “If we’re going to get into the petty nonsense of counting nickels and dimes, we ought to take a look at the exorbitant salaries being paid these city managers and local government executives.”

With the defeat of the legislation, Hurtt said he plans to ask Gov. Pete Wilson to take administrative steps to alter the prevailing wage law. Wilson Administration officials said they welcome the request, but expressed fears that any attempts to change wages could be slowed or stopped by lawsuits filed by organized labor. John Duncan, spokesman for the state Department of Industrial Relations, said prevailing wage is “a sacred issue” for labor unions.

Duncan said the administration might attempt to ask for changes during upcoming budget negotiations, which would provide the “most effective forum” for give-and-take between lawmakers representing opposing views. In particular, he said, “perhaps there can be some give out of the Democratic side of the aisle.”

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One of Hurtt’s bills would have scrapped California’s existing method of calculating prevailing wages in favor of the system used by the federal government and all 49 other states. The change would have saved 20% in labor costs on public works projects, Hurtt said, money the state could use each year to build 75 additional schools or 20 jails with 100 beds each.

The other measure would have allowed local governments to exempt themselves from prevailing wage laws for municipal projects, an idea that has been supported by the League of California Cities and other government groups.

Aside from implications for the state budget, the current prevailing wage formula is “bad civil rights,” said state Sen. Tom Campbell (R-Stanford), a supporter of Hurtt’s reform movement. Campbell said the system is based on the federal Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which originally was intended to let labor unions dominated by whites avoid competing for scarce jobs with migrant black workers willing to take lower wages.

Even now, reformers say, the expensive process of completing volumes of paperwork required under the measure effectively keeps minority and female-owned businesses from competing for and winning government construction projects. Carol Biondi, president of a small Bay Area construction firm, said the prevailing wage laws make competing for government jobs “a morass.”