Hurtt Proposes Lower Wages in Quake Recovery : Public works: The Garden Grove state senator renews attack on state’s prevailing-wage rate. Unions and Democrats give his legislation little chance.

State Sen. Rob Hurtt of Orange County sees opportunity amid the rubble of last month’s powerful Northridge earthquake to save taxpayers’ money.

With the temblor causing nearly $3.5 billion in damage to the region’s freeways and other public property, Hurtt (R-Garden Grove) has introduced legislation he says would slice wages for repair work by 20%.

Hurtt’s attack on the so-called “prevailing wage rate” paid to workers on public projects isn’t anything new in Sacramento. Republican lawmakers have been trying for years to get the wage rate cut, but have consistently been thwarted by Democratic lawmakers sympathetic to organized labor. Hurtt himself introduced such a bill that was defeated in committee just last month.

But the earthquake--and the huge tab for repairs to shattered freeway bridges--has offered Hurtt a chance to raise the issue anew, arguing that cutting the wage rate could save taxpayers more than $450 million on “inflated and exorbitant” rebuilding costs.

The gist of the legislation is to revamp the state’s complicated wage formula to bring it in line with the method used by the federal government, a change Hurtt and other Republicans say would dramatically cut costs for public projects.

“It is utterly unconscionable to me that we would continue to waste taxpayer dollars in a time of crisis,” Hurtt said. “Currently, a flag man on a road job makes nearly $30 an hour, and nearly $50 an hour for overtime. It’s a slap in the face to taxpayers and the victims of this earthquake who will have to foot the public-works repair bill.”

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But even with the Legislature eager to offer whatever help possible to earthquake victims, Democratic lawmakers say they expect Hurtt’s new bill will die like all the others. Labor leaders also remain confident that they can, as they have many times in the past, defeat the measure in committee. They also suggest that Hurtt and others are using the earthquake simply to push their conservative agenda.

“We’re aggressively opposed,” said John F. Henning, executive secretary of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. “It’s fair to conclude that these bills represent sternly conservative thought. They are using the earthquake for their own philosophical purposes.”

Henning said it would be unfair to reduce wages paid to workers doing earthquake repairs because owners of contracting firms aren’t being called on to make a similar sacrifice.

“Why should workers be penalized? The contractors won’t be, the firms that supply materials won’t be,” Henning said. “Everyone else will get their fair share, what they feel is their due. It’s a one-sided approach.”

Democratic lawmakers also are drawing their sabers in the fight against Hurtt’s bill. Sen. Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton) sent a memo to members of the Legislature last week, suggesting that Hurtt was using “highly misleading information” to push his stand on the wage issue.

Johnston argued that it was pointless to talk about reducing the state’s prevailing wage rate because most of the earthquake restoration work is federally financed and will fall under federal wages that, in California, are nearly equal to salaries established by the state formula.

He also said that Hurtt’s estimate of a 20% savings comes from a “highly flawed” study by the legislative analyst in 1990 that measured the differences in rates in three rural counties that are not indicative of the state as a whole. A study conducted in 1992 showed that wage changes wouldn’t yield a savings.

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Johnston also said that Hurtt had ignored “the basic purpose” of the wage law--to prevent out-of-state contractors and workers from unfairly underbidding their California counterparts. He suggested the law was helping stem an erosion of jobs in the construction trades, where one in five workers is unemployed. Moreover, he said, slashing the wage rate would undermine “the quality of craftsmanship” on the earthquake work.

“Do we really want to trust the restoration of our public highways and buildings . . . to low-paid workers with questionable skills?” Johnston asked.

Such arguments don’t sit well with Hurtt and others eager to reform the wage laws.

Joe Yocca, Hurtt’s top Sacramento aide, said the federal standard for California is “inflated” because it is based largely on the high salaries paid under state prevailing-wage rules. He also argued that craftsmanship would not suffer, because the same construction workers would be doing most of the jobs.

Yocca disagreed with Johnston’s justification that the wage laws are needed to stem out-of-state competition. He said the system is based on the federal Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which was originally intended to let labor unions dominated by whites avoid competing for scarce jobs with migrant black workers willing to take lower wages. “It was originally intended as a racist law,” Yocca said, adding that the wage regulations continue to hinder minority-owned firms to this day.

“Pat Johnston isn’t fooling anyone,” Yocca concluded. “That letter is simply playing apologist for the labor unions. It’s very simple to see through.”

Despite such fighting words, Yocca and others concede that they face an uphill fight in the Legislature. Even so, they hope that debate on the measure--and a dose of public pressure--could push Gov. Pete Wilson to take executive action to suspend the prevailing-wage law.

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Although such an action would enrage organized labor, there is precedence for such a move. After hurricanes struck Florida and Hawaii, then-President George Bush ordered the relaxation of wage standards in those states to ease repair costs.

Few in California expected President Clinton to do the same after the earthquake. Support from organized labor helped get him elected, and the President undid his predecessor’s wage changes shortly after taking office. But many Republicans say Pete Wilson could help post-earthquake repairs by cutting the state rate.

Wilson Administration officials said they are looking at that possibility, but no decisions have been made.

John Duncan, spokesman for the state Department of Industrial Relations, said the administration might attempt to ask for changes during upcoming budget negotiations