Seven council members stand with union workers on 'prevailing wage' and pre-qualifying contractors

CEDAR RAPIDS - Seven of nine City Council members joined a crowd of union workers in a labor hall training center this morning to show support for paying union wages to local workers on the city's upcoming flood-recovery building projects.

Mayor Ron Corbett ran the morning news conference at which he introduced a series of union leaders, two other council members and two contractor representatives, who, in turn, talked about high jobless rates among local building-trades workers, the loss of work to sometimes questionable low-pay, out-of-town companies and the need to get moving on rebuilding flood-damaged city buildings.

Corbett said the City Council was taking two specific steps:

The council would require contractors on upcoming city projects to follow federal Davis-Bacon Act standards, which require that the local “prevailing wage” be paid to workers. Prevailing wage is typically union-wage rates, Ray Dochterman, business agent for Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 125, noted before Wednesday's event at his union hall.

The council also will pre-qualify contractors who bid on projects to make sure, council member Chuck Swore explained, that contractors have good safety records, good training programs, financial wherewithal and a willingness to work under guidelines established by the City Council.

Corbett, a Republican and former state Republican lawmaker who secured strong labor support in his run for mayor in 2009, noted that some local communities work hard to see how they can “exempt” themselves from the requirements of the federal Davis-Bacon Act.

“We're going to embrace it,” Corbett said.

He said the use of federal dollars on local projects requires following the Davis-Bacon standard on prevailing wage, but at the same time he noted that projects that use funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency don't come under Davis-Bacon Act rules. Much of the federal money going into the city's flood-damaged buildings, in fact, is FEMA money.

But Corbett said the city is expecting federal dollars from other sources to be used on the city's big projects like the library, Central Fire Station, Paramount Theatre, U.S. Cellular Center, Event Center convention center, Veterans Memorial Building and the old federal courthouse. By way of example, he pointed to $10 million in federal energy efficiency funds now in state hands for which the city intends to apply, the mayor said.

The city also is hoping to secure a $35-million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce to help build a new convention center.

Among those who came to the microphone was Russ Gunderson, who said more than 50 percent of his workers are now out of worked. He blamed some of it on out-of-town and out-of-state workers.

Scott Smith, president of the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Building Trades Council, estimated that 25 percent to 50 percent or more in many of the building trades were out of work, and he, too, pointed to out-of-town contractors underbidding local contractors for local work.

Council member Justin Shields, a local labor leader himself, thanked the crowd of perhaps 100 people for attending the Wednesday morning event. “But you should be out there working today,” Shields said.

Since the June 2008 flood, Shields said the city has seen too many contractors and workers with license plates from the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia and Texas, and he said the city's rebuilding needed quality local workers and contractors to do the job.

Dave Hogan of the local carpenters union said the city's plan to pre-qualify contractors will “weed out disreputable contractors.” He pointed to what he said were state of Iowa figures that had identified $12 million in unreported income and $750,000 in unpaid unemployment taxes from irresponsible contractors working on disaster projects.