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Prevailing Wage Laws May Be Repealed

Missouri Capitol Building
j.stephenconn
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Missouri Statehouse in Jefferson City

The Missouri State Senate will hear a bill that could remove prevailing wage laws in the state Monday.

These laws require government organizations to pay contractors what is known as prevailing wage. Prevailing wage is an established hourly rate determined by a survey of contracts in each county.

Richard Sheets, deputy director for the Missouri Municipal League, thinks that this system is faulty.

“There’s no penalty if you don’t submit those wages. So what happens, is the wage rate that public projects have to pay are actually wage rates that come from Kansas City and St. Louis,” Sheets said.

According to Sheets, this would cause a public institution like the University of Missouri to pay higher wages than the actual prevailing wage in Boone County.

“You know, what you see is a city building a public works barn, or a building, and next door a private person would be building the exact same building and it would be 20 percent, or more, less expensive because of prevailing wage,” Sheets said.

Sheets said he would be in support of keeping prevailing wage, but he said there is no interest in fixing the problem with wage reports. He thinks the next best thing is to remove prevailing wage laws entirely.

Business Manager for the Heavy Construction Laborers Local 663 Jason Mendenhall thinks removing prevailing wage laws would have a negative impact on the economy.

“Repealing the prevailing wage law in the state of Missouri in its entirety, or watering it down to almost nothing is not a way to support the middle class, increase wages, an increase the good tax base we enjoy now because people are currently making a living wage,” Mendenhall says.

He argues if prevailing wage legislation was removed, competition would cause workers to not be paid a living wage. He thinks that this contradicts the Governor’s plan to help the middle class.

“It is very, very short sighted,” Mendenhall said.

If passed, Missouri would join 20 other states including Nebraska and Kansas with no prevailing wage law.