15,000 Rally Against ‘Prevailing Wage’ Cut

Nearly 15,000 roofers, carpenters, pipe fitters and other construction workers jammed downtown streets Monday, protesting Gov. Pete Wilson’s efforts to cut the “prevailing wage” on California’s public works projects.

Unionized laborers rallied in front of the State Office Building on Broadway, urging Wilson to drop plans to change the formula for calculating prevailing wages, which are normally based on union pay rates that often exceed average wages. The demonstrators--chanting “Pete’s Gotta Go” and waving placards and American flags--said their average pay will fall 20%, a figure disputed by state officials.

The state Department of Industrial Relations, which held a hearing on the proposal later in the day, is expected to approve the change.

Monday morning’s demonstration came as organized labor and its allies, both in California and across the nation, are trying to transform workers’ growing frustrations over stagnant or declining wages into a political force in this year’s elections. Along with seeking support for political candidates friendly to union causes, worker activists are pushing for referendums to boost minimum wages in California and other Western states.

At the downtown protest, the rhetoric was intense. In California and throughout the country, prevailing wages long have been regarded by unions and their supporters as a fundamental labor protection. Along with assuring workers decent pay, advocates say, prevailing wages also provide funds for needed apprenticeship programs that produce highly skilled workers.

“Pete Barton Wilson, if you want to save money, cut your own pay by 20%. Keep your hands off our wallets,” cried Robert L. Balgenorth, president of the California Building and Construction Trades Council, which organized the 7 a.m. rally. “It’s a war on working people, it’s a war on our jobs, it’s a war on our standard of living,” he said.

The Wilson administration, however, says that its plan would save taxpayers $200 million annually, largely by reducing above-market wages paid in rural areas of the state. “This is taxpayers’ money,” said John C. Duncan, chief deputy director of the state Department of Industrial Relations.

He said the proposed changes would enable the state to build more prisons, schools and hospitals, and “do it more cost effectively.”

The current prevailing wage system in California ties wages to the most common pay level in an area--enabling the union pay scale to prevail even if a minority of workers are represented by organized labor. Under the Wilson proposal, wages would be pegged to what the majority of construction workers in a given area earn or to a “weighted average” of workers’ wages. Duncan said the change would put California’s formula in line with what already is used by the federal government and 47 other states.

Still, labor advocates complained that the change would overturn years of collective bargaining with contractors. “Wilson wants everybody to be day laborers,” said Robert Payne, executive vice president of the Plumbing and Piping Industry Council.

“There’s not much to hold on to when you cut a working man’s wages,” said Richard Talmadge, a carpenter, who said he hasn’t had a pay raise in five years.

For labor activists, the construction workers’ concerns represent an opportunity to rally broader support for ballot measures and legislative proposals to boost the incomes of low-paid workers.

Many of the construction workers at the demonstration, for example, signed petitions for an initiative that the California Labor Federation hopes to place on the November ballot to increase the state’s minimum wage.

The so-called Living Wage Initiative would raise the state’s minimum wage--which matches the federal minimum of $4.25 an hour, and has been at that level since 1988--to $5 in March 1997 and to $5.75 in March 1998.

“I’m sure we collected several thousand signatures,” said Richard Holober, the assistant research director of the state labor federation and a spokesman for the initiative campaign.

Labor officials predicted that concerns over stagnant wages could help realign the politics of the labor movement by uniting often-conservative construction workers with lower-paid janitors and hotel employees.

“We’re in an era of declining wages, and all workers connect with that,” Holober said. “There’s absolutely no hesitation on the part of construction workers [to support raising the minimum wage] even if they don’t benefit personally.”

Labor and community activists in Los Angeles, meanwhile, are expected to lobby this year for an ordinance that would benefit low-wage workers at firms and organizations that receive subsidies from, or do business with, the city of Los Angeles. Although the specifics have not been worked out, the proposal would likely call for these employers to pay minimum wages of at least $7 an hour.