In a split vote at its June 16 meeting, Austin ISD's board of trustees adopted the federal Davis-Bacon prevailing wage schedule as the schedule AISD uses to pay construction workers, and the board pledged to conduct an additional study to determine a living wage for workers.
Pipe fitters, laborers and representatives from Austin Interfaith and AISD employees union Education Austin urged the board to adopt Davis-Bacon and stop using what they called an outdated wage rate schedule, while others called Davis-Bacon "flawed" and asked the board to postpone the vote.
Kayvon Sabourian, an attorney with the Austin nonprofit Equal Justice Center, has said the state allows school districts two options—adopting federal wage rates or conducting a wage rates study. The board in January approved a consent agenda item to put its own study in place, and AISD currently uses wage rates based on a study conducted in 2005, he said.
Sabourian told the board he has represented construction workers whose prevailing wage rates have been violated on AISD projects.
"Davis-Bacon is not only what's best for workers; it is what's best for taxpayers," Sabourian said. "In fact, Davis-Bacon was created primarily as a way to protect taxpayer money by stopping it [from being used to pay for] lower quality construction."
Adopting Davis-Bacon
Initial work is moving forward on a few Austin ISD bond projects approved by voters in 2013. The district's board of trustees decided to discuss potentially revising the wage rate structure after a group of local citizens at its April 28 meeting asked the district to halt work on bond projects until construction workers are being paid fair wages.
Davis-Bacon wage rates are based on a federal law requiring payment of prevailing wage rates for laborers.
At the June 16 meeting, trustee Tamala Barksdale made a motion to adopt Davis-Bacon rates, while trustee Ann Teich added the living wage floor amendment. The vote was 5–4, with trustees Cheryl Bradley, Lori Moya, Robert Schneider and board President Vincent Torres opposed.
Schneider said he is concerned about whether or not the district will be able to afford a wage increase coupled with paying for voter-approved 2013 bond projects in a timely manner.
Torres said he sees problems with Davis-Bacon prevailing wage determinations, including survey response errors and reliance on "inappropriately small and unrepresentative data sets."
"Is Davis-Bacon perfect? Far from it," he said.
Patrick Flynn, president of Flynn Construction, requested the district conduct a survey with organizations including the Association of Builders and Contractors, or ABC. Flynn said local organizations including the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce and the Real Estate Council of Austin would support such a survey.
"The issue with Davis-Bacon rates is that they are unbalanced and the wage rates are flawed," Flynn said. "I support paying these gentlemen and ladies what they deservebut there are trades that are not getting paid sufficiently."
Bradley said she was most concerned with Davis-Bacon's wage floor of $7.75 per hour for low wage, non-union workers, stating that is not a living wage.
Trustees Ann Teich and Jayme Mathias clarified that just because a wage floor is specified for low-wage workers, it does not mean that is the only amount AISD will pay those workers, especially if the district wants to remain competitive.
Attendee Jeremy Hendricks with the Laborers' International Union of North America said Davis-Bacon is an accepted standard that would ensure AISD is getting quality work.
"We, the unions, are the ones that represent the lowest wage workers on the Davis-Bacon wage scale," he said. "I find it offensive that the ABC, the chamber, the trustees, the staff, or anyone else has ever tried to speak for the lowest wage workers. We believe Davis-Bacon absolutely guarantees that the lowest wage workers to the highest wage workers are protected."
