Kentucky House panel defeats prevailing wage exemption bill

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Bruce Schreiner | Updated Feb 4, 2014

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) – Cheered on by a roomful of union construction workers, a Kentucky House committee on Thursday defeated a Republican-backed bill to exempt public school projects from the state’s prevailing wage.

The arguments and outcome echoed past years when Senate Republicans made the prevailing-wage exemption a top priority, only to watch it stall in the Democratic-led House.

Republican Sen. Wil Schroder, the bill’s lead sponsor this year, said the issue will certainly resurface next year when the General Assembly’s political dynamics could be changed

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This KY Contractor Has Spent 10 Years Fighting $50,000 in Back Wage Claims. They Finally Lost.

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

November 5, 2014

A case brought forward by the Kentucky Building Trades was recently upheld in the Kentucky Court of Appeals providing a victory for both the involved unions and their signatory contractors.  The case will mean Teco Mechanical, a non-union contractor from Lexington, will pay $54,164 in back wages to its workers along with a $5,250 penalty (plus eight percent compound interest from December of 2004).  The nearly decade-long case has gone through all levels of the Kentucky legal system and tested both the patience and perseverance of the Kentucky Labor Cabinet.

The incidents themselves date back to 2000 when Teco worked several prevailing wage projects and failed to correctly pay its employees.  The Kentucky Labor Cabinet then performed an investigation, according to the Court of Appeals opinion:

TECO is a mechanical contractor that provided contractor and subcontractor services on a number of public works projects. Pursuant to statute, contracts for these projects required TECO to pay its employees no less than the prevailing wage.1 KRS 337.510(1). In 2001, several TECO employees contacted the Kentucky Labor Cabinet and alleged that TECO had failed to pay them the prevailing wages for the work that they had performed. The employees asserted that TECO had paid them according to a formula under which it classified them as lower paid, general laborers for a fixed number of hours and as higher paid, skilled laborers for a fixed number of hours-regardless of the actual time spent working in each classification.

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Prevailing wage bill dies in committee

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By RONNIE ELLISCNHI

FRANKFORT – The state House of Representatives will apparently not vote on a bill to remove the requirement that public school construction projects pay the area’s prevailing wage.

The bill was sponsored by House Minority Leader Jeff Hoover, R-Jamestown, and supporters say its passage would save local school districts and the state several million dollars on school construction projects. Opponents say requiring the prevailing wage for such projects ensures higher work quality and benefits both union and non-union workers’ wages.