Wasn't The Davis-Bacon Act A Four-Piece Combo Back During the British Invasion?

Apparently I'm mistaken:

If, needing to move quickly in an emergency, one of your hands is tied behind your back, you should untie it. But once the emergency has passed, you might ask: "Why did I tie it in the first place?" That's a question Congress should now ponder.

On September 8, President Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, the federal "prevailing wage" law, in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. This is a welcome move in the effort to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region, helping to create jobs in the hurricane-stricken areas. But if suspending Davis-Bacon is good for economic development and job growth in a disaster area, repealing it entirely would be good for the country.

Davis-Bacon requires federal contractors to pay the "prevailing" wage in a given locality as determined by the Secretary of Labor. Because this has typically been equivalent to the prevailing union wage, the law makes it harder for non-union contractors to compete.

Disaster-stricken areas need all the workers they can get. To meet that urgent need, any regulations that hinder hiring should be put aside.

The move has precedent. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush suspended Davis-Bacon in areas of South Florida and coastal Louisiana hit by Hurricane Andrew, as well as areas of Hawaii struck by Hurricane Iniki. However, a March 1993 Clinton Executive Order reinstated Davis-Bacon. (The lesson is hardly new -- following the Great Fire of London in 1666, Parliament abolished the trade guild system to ensure a sufficient supply of skilled labor to rebuild the city.)

President Bush has done the right thing by suspending Davis-Bacon in the stricken areas. But, since this move recognizes that the Act hinders job creation, we should ask: If scuttling Davis-Bacon is a good idea for the Gulf Coast, why isn't it a good idea for the rest of the country? Further, the law's effect and ugly history suggests it is time for its repeal.

Big Labor doesn't give a damn about jobs. They care about padding union leaders' wallets.

And I say that as the son of a man who spent 32 years as a union bricklayer and got a cheap bottle of wine upon retirement. He'd stopped drinking 25 years before.

I well remember accompanying him to the union hall and seeing all the well-dressed, manicured union leaders there. If they'd hefted a 12-inch block in their lives, you'd never know it.

My dad, on the other hand, had hands that looked liked redwood bark and the perpetual stoop of a man who began most days kneeling over the first course of brick.

As for the "prevailing wage", my father had to take side jobs to feed five kids, and made more on most of them than he did on the union jobs, although he always noted he'd had to work harder.

The problem with unions is it takes an awful lot of working man's sweat to pay for Kirkland and Hoffa to fly around the country doing media junkets.

Bush did more good for workers belaying this stupid law than Congress ever did passing it.