Labor official proposes prevailing wage reforms

Wednesday, April 12, 2000 | 11:51 a.m.

The changes could blunt criticism of a law widely perceived to inflate the cost of public buildings and unfairly favor union labor.

Prevailing wage laws require that construction workers on public works be paid the "prevailing wage" for the county. But Nevada's present regulations allow the wage paid to as few as 30 percent of workers to be deemed "prevailing."

Even that standard wasn't followed in setting many wages now in force for Clark County, the Las Vegas Review-Journal recently disclosed. The newspaper analyzed data from the commissioner's annual wage survey, the ostensible base for prevailing wages. In many trades, nobody at all had actually earned as much as the wages determined to "prevail."

"The biggest concern I have had is that both the statute and the regulation are so ambiguous," said Johnson. "They can be clarified to give the staff direction about how to use some of the various kinds of information they have, to arrive at a prevailing wage."

Perhaps most significant, Johnson's proposed regulation would allow future wage increases won by union workers to be factored into prevailing wages for the coming year. Nevada's present law doesn't include this method.

Nevada's prevailing wage law is modeled on the federal version, the Davis-Bacon Act. The 30 percent rule was once part of the federal law, but has been replaced with the 50 percent standard Johnson now proposes to use in Nevada. If no particular wage were paid 50 percent of the time, Johnson proposes to use a "weighted average" standard, taking into account the number of hours worked at different wages by the same craft.

Johnson set public hearings to take testimony both on his proposals and on any others that may emerge. The first will be April 25 in Carson City.