{"id":9496,"date":"2011-03-30T08:11:06","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T15:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/?p=9496"},"modified":"2011-03-30T08:11:27","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T15:11:27","slug":"unions-prevaile-while-most-nevadans-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/unions-prevaile-while-most-nevadans-struggle\/","title":{"rendered":"Unions Prevail While Most Nevadans Struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"
(Geoffrey Lawrence\/NPRI<\/em>) – In the 2011 Nevada Legislature, lawmakers in the majority are again carrying water for organized trade unions \u2014 from the Keynesian “jobs fund”<\/a> proposal to the mercantilist “Nevada Jobs First”<\/a> proposal.<\/p>\n Longtime Nevada residents know this is nothing new. It began in the 1930s, when legislators first adopted the state’s prevailing wage requirements on public works projects.<\/p>\n Prevailing wage laws in Nevada are adapted from federal language contained in the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. The explicit purpose of these laws is to prevent a free market from allocating individuals with valuable trade skills to areas where they are most needed.<\/p>\n Since the law’s explicit purpose is to undermine this critical role of markets and artificially ensure regional scarcity for skilled labor, it should come as no surprise that the law substantially increases labor costs. The only question becomes: “By how much?”<\/p>\n That question will be explored in detail by a forthcoming Nevada Policy Research Institute policy study, which will look at the two surveys Nevada conducts of wages in the construction industry.<\/p>\n One is administered by the Nevada Labor Commissioner to determine prevailing wage rates<\/a>. That survey’s methodology was intentionally biased by the lawmakers who designed it to over-represent rates received by union labor. The result is that “prevailing wage” rates do not, as the name indicates, approximate the wage rates that prevail in the marketplace. Instead, prevailing wage rates are set to the rates that trade unions would like to receive.<\/p>\n