The Davis–Bacon Act of 1931 is a United States federal law that establishes the requirement for paying the local prevailing wages on public works projects for laborers and mechanics. It applies to "contractors and subcontractors performing on federally funded or assisted contracts in excess of $2,000 for the construction, alteration, or repair (including painting and decorating) of public buildings or public works".
The act is named after its sponsors, James J. Davis, a Senator from Pennsylvania and a former Secretary of Labor under three presidents, and Representative Robert L. Bacon of Long Island, New York. The Davis–Bacon act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Herbert Hoover on March 3, 1931.
As of 2016, the act increases the cost of wages in federal construction projects by an average of $1.4 billion per year.
History
Leading to passage
Prior to the passage of the federal Davis–Bacon Act (abbreviated DBA), other jurisdictions in the United States had passed laws that required that contractors on public works projects pay the wage that prevailed locally. “In 1891, Kansas adopted a law requiring that ‘not less than the current rate of per diem wages in the locality where the work is performed shall be paid to laborers, workmen, mechanics, and other persons so employed by or on behalf of the state of Kansas’ or of other local jurisdictions. Through the next several decades, other states followed suit, enacting a variety of labor-protective statutes covering workers in contract production.”
In 1927, a contractor employed African-American workers from Alabama to build a Veterans' Bureau hospital in the district of Congressman Bacon. Prompted by concerns about the conditions of workers, displacement of local workers by migrant workers, and competitive pressure toward lower wages, Bacon introduced the first version of his bill in 1927.
Over the next few years, Bacon attempted to introduce variations on the prevailing wage bill 13 times. Finally, in the midst of the Great Depression, with local workers complaining losing jobs to those willing to work for lower wages, and additional complaints from Congressmen frustrated that their efforts to bring "pork barrel" projects home to their districts did not result in jobs for their constituents (and therefore political support from them), the Hoover Administration requested that Congress reconsider the Act once more as a means of preventing falling wages. Sponsored in the Senate by former Labor Secretary Davis, it passed by voice vote and was signed into law on 3 March 1931.
Since passage
Immediately after passage
The Davis–Bacon Act has been amended several times in its history. Almost immediately upon passage in 1931, both unions and contractors expressed dissatisfaction with key components of the law. Unions said that the law lacked enforcement teeth, while contractors said that it was impossible to know beforehand what the prevailing wages were when submitting bids. President Hoover issued Executive Order 5778, clarifying some of the enforcement mechanisms, and Congress considered amendments which were vetoed before Hoover left office.
1930s
In 1934 Congress passed and President Roosevelt signed the Copeland "Anti-kickback" Act, a supplement to the DBA. This was followed in 1935 with another amendment which introduced five changes: (1) The threshold for falling under the DBA requirements were lowered from $5,000 to $2,000; (2) coverage was extended to all federal contract construction, including painting and decorating; (3) the agency may withhold funds sufficient to pay underpaid workers; (4) the Comptroller General would make a list of contractors who had “disregarded their obligations to employees and subcontractors” so that they could be blacklisted from federal contracts for three years; (5) right of legal action was explicitly granted to laborers regardless of whether they had accepted wages; and (6) DBA contracts would include “the minimum wages to be paid various classes of laborers and mechanics” prior to the submission of bids by a contractor (predetermination). The predetermination requirement set up a mechanism to collect and disseminate appropriate prevailing wage data prior to issuing proposal requests for federal contract bids. Many of these changes were introduced at the urging of labor unions.