should the Davis-Bacon Act be suspended for gulf oil clean-up work?

No. It is not a lack of financial capability that is keeping labor limited for clean-up work. If you depress the wages it has a systemic effect throughout the community. More people enter the community, but per capita they don't have the same spending power, yet they have the same need for food, shelter, gas, and less discretionary income.

Davis-Bacon and the Jones Act should be scrapped. Permanately. I would cite unintended consequences, but nothing that obvious can be called unintended.

yeah, that was my thinking.

Don't know if you know, but NM has a law corrosponding to Davis-Bacon for any state jobs. They also anticipate that employers will be making a contribution to some apprenticeship program or other, based on a percentage of wages paid.

In the oilfield, the law does not apply to work done on an emergency basis. It's almost as though the state allowed for the possibility of emergencies.

This entire incident should have been declared a national emergency and the military brought in. It was way over BP's head and not in their interest to show initiative in the clean-up. Heck, the lawsuits over just that would be horrendous for BP. This dollar settlement was for their protection, for sure. no good would come from causing this company to crash.

As a foreign company, it is easier to put a dollar amount on this rather that put in the manhours and acknowledge legal liability for the clean-up. Damages will be assessed in the good ole American way: loss of dollars.

Nature will handle this bomb. Not the way we want it to, but it will. BP knows that. In six months, no one will remember; the paperwork will still be in piles and people will still be waiting for their money.

The military has no experience in cleaning up oil or plugging up leaking oil wells. I'd hire all those fishermen and oil workers in Louisiana before I would ask some private from Nebraska to step in.

I don't pretend to know the answer; it just seems to me that not enough is being done quickly enough. Relying on BP is obviously not in our best interest in terms of getting the oil cleaned up. Now the tropical storm "Alex" is turning into a hurricane and it is possible it will blow into the gulf. It is just horrible and the damage will be long term and I don't think forgotten any time soon.

is typing that important in the clean up operation

this thread is about the Davis-Bacon Act, unemployment and the oil spill clean-up. It's not about BP. my thinking is that suspending David-Bacon could result in increasing employment while at the same time increase labor needed for environmental remediation along the gulf coast.

So who's going to work for $8.00 per hour? (unskilled laborer cleaning up seaweed soaked oil?)

We can hire the illegal mexicans like the rest of business does.

Not a good idea, because businesses won't increase employment based on this - they'll just employ the same amount of people they currently have, at a lower rate.

Who exactly thinks that people aren't being hired due to a lack of money to afford them? BP profited over 180 BILLION dollars in the last 10 years; they can afford to pay ******* minimum wage.

Cycloptichorn

I'm saying people won't work for $8 @ hour! (except probably illegal aliens)

Why should someone collecting $13 in unemployment wages take a dirty job for $8? That's what's happening here in Michigan.

cost/benefit analysis is a conservative methodology, it's also a free-enterprise principle.

is minimum wage the same as prevailing wage?

Davis Bacon assures that prevailing local wages will be paid, why should it be suspended?
http://www.gpo.gov/davisbacon/LA.html

No

I'm thinking that labor is a commodity, say like housing. in many areas housing has dropped in value significantly, should I pay for a house at what it was valued at or what it is currently valued at? The idea that employment and wages will return to previous highs seems a bit silly to me.

... but there's no shortage of money to pay the prevailing wages. So why not pay them?

Cycloptichorn