Labor’s prevailing winds

They want Truth, Justice and Righteousness to prevail. So they say.

But they're against prevailing wages.

"Prevailing wage laws set requirements for businesses to compete for taxpayer-funded project. ... Ditch this Jim Crow-era mandate,” demands a New York Post headline. They are not guilty of naked revisionism, because there is a thread of truth wrapped around an ulterior motive like an anaconda.

But they are on the hook for an egregious throttling of historical context.

It's true that Jim Crow laws were in effect when Congress passed a "prevailing wage” law in 1931, and that it benefited labor unions which, by often excluding minority members, effectively rendered them unemployable.

But using that as an argument against protecting all workers from exploitation today is a transparent distraction from their underlying drive of neutralizing the labor movement and ceding absolute power to employers.

What they really want is for workers to "eat crow.”

It is impertinently bold to claim that Blacks are best served by distancing themselves from other workers and that bosses are chomping at the bit to reward them for their merits. Their humanitarian hands are tied by bullying unions, they weep.

Don't depend on bosses for grace. They are capable of fairness, intermittently and often in isolation, but relying on it is no formula for an expedited path of upward mobility for the victims of Jim Crow and their posterity.

Union-busters come in different forms and with varied motives, whether driven by demagoguery or some pragmatic goal that suits and feeds their ambition. But they are all patronizing and condescending to Blacks and other minorities, whom they try to seduce with false promises and empty offerings.

Their ruse is rarely effective. At least not for long. They are vipers in vicars' clothing.

These "right to work" zealots strain to ingratiate and endear themselves to an underclass who, they keep their fingers crossed, will be naive, trusting and obedient and will not notice or much mind the impotence to which their own faith in decency has contributed to reducing them.

They know perfectly well that unions can no longer bar, nor are they inclined to exclude minorities from membership. Federal civil rights laws block them from doing so.

First, proselytize with sweet talk and promises. If they don't convert, incinerate them. That m.o. of a particular figure from the religious Reformation of the 16th century is on loan to modern corporate America.

Prevailing wage laws are not designed to equalize the balance of power between workers and management. But they protect workers by restricting the lengths that businesses can go to circumvent paying workers their due.

The Post blames them for higher construction costs, and bemoans that taxpayers have to "shell out" more because of contractors being "forced to provide financial support to union-sponsored programs.” They hammer the  record-keeping imposed by "nonsensical left-leaning state and local governments across the country."

It's not about Jim Crow laws. What they revile is leftist unions, as they perceive them. The same entities that vilify prevailing wage laws also denounce minimum wage laws, no matter how low.

Naturally, consumer prices will be higher when workers who produce the commodity or perform  the service are paid fifteen dollars rather than 15 cents an hour. Costs need to be passed on. Not even progressive entrepreneurs work for charity.

Subsistence wages need a massive shot of Red Bull.

"Living wage,” "minimum wage" and "prevailing wage" are not interchangeable. Prevailing wage "refers to the rate of pay that contractors and vendors must offer their employees when doing business with a government agency.” The Davis-Bacon Act requires employers to pay "a median wage for similar work in the area ..."

This curbs employers from hiring carpetbaggers from out of state who might otherwise undercut locals by agreeing to less compensation. Maybe when they talk about "shelling out" for labor, the corporations really mean that their workers should be paid in bags of shells. 

Better than bitcoin.

Prevailing wage laws "level the playing field … protect union workers' gains … promote sectoral standards,” according to the Center for American Progress, which notes that the fixed rates of compensation are for grants and loans, as well as government contracts.

"Liberal" members of the Supreme Court usually side with unions, but they recently left Associate Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson isolated and alone in a recent ruling against the Teamsters. In a case unrelated to "prevailing wages,” they ruled that the union could be held liable for damages to their employers’ property while they were on strike, even though the work stoppage was legal.

Their contract having expired, the Teamsters walked away from their cement-mixing trucks in the middle of their shift. The union had failed to reasonably safeguard their bosses' property, thereby putting it in "imminent danger,” even though no actual harm was done, determined by the black-robed aristocracy of scholars.

Fair enough. It wasn't nice of the Teamsters. But that's irrelevant. It can be generally predicted, given the current Supreme Court majority, that they will shoot judicial hollow-point bullets through the bodies of collective-bargaining affirmers.

Since employers lawfully bully workers, their victims must devise ingenious techniques and tricks of unauthorized reciprocity. In some venues and scenarios, strength in numbers is all they have, other than the power of justice itself, which as a moral vacuum is sterile without the fist of human action.

Justice will not seize the day. Sometimes it is lucky to survive the day. "My Union, right or wrong,” because it rights wrongs.

The clout of a million unorganized workers is no match for that of even a relatively benign, semi-amiable believer in common sense and non-partisanship, like the self-made billionaire John Catsimatidis, who has purchased himself a prodigious spotlight on the public stage.

On WABC radio, which he bought with pocket change a few years ago, he is described, in the the most understated promo of the century, as "involved in many businesses.” Beyond media, it includes a real-estate empire, supermarket chains, a fuel refinery and United Metro Energy, which heats New York City's schools, hospitals and other city agencies.

Three or four of his expensive full-page ads appear daily in the New York Post. Some of them feature a single item, such as a flavor of Friendly's ice cream, or Liquid Death Mountain Water. Others spotlight his "luxury condominiums" in St. Petersburg or his rentals on the Island of Coney, "if you can afford it.”

They call him "The Catman.” His claws are retractable. But he must get what he wants. And people like him have an insatiable desire to want whatever they can get.

For years, he has locked horns with his United Metro Energy workers and the bitter labor dispute continues to rage. Any coverage in the Post, where he heavily advertises?

Crickets.

And though he hosts talk shows on his radio station for many hours every week, he'll never frontally attack, much less significantly poke  Mayor Adams on City issues. Can his gargantuan laundry list of city contracts have anything to do with it?

Money may smile or smirk, but the Universal Ear hears its voice. The bosses carry the big stick and the workers speak softly. The real world does not readily yield to a new reality.

Let's contemplate ways and means for a seismic shift, not pausing to think which centenarian will outlive the other: former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger or NBC's former meteorologist Dr. Frank Field, who spawned his own Storm.