Brian Sikma, BridgeTower Media Newswires
In a clever ploy, pro-labor union organizations are fighting back against efforts to eliminate prevailing-wage laws by claiming that repeal would be a direct attack on veterans.
At a time when veterans enjoy wide public respect in the aftermath of intense conflict in two wars, the argument packs a hefty political punch. But while the rhetoric is powerful, the evidence behind it is pretty thin, and the claim is easily debunked when the prevailing-wage discussion is put in perspective.
In a May 2015 editorial for the Huffington Post, Jon Soltz of VoteVets.org astonishingly asserted that, “A repeal of state prevailing wage laws would be an economic disaster for veterans.”
Soltz also claimed that:
“Missing entirely from the debate over these laws is who they would impact the most. Military veterans, for example, pursue employment in the construction trades at substantially higher rates than non-veterans.”
But that’s a mischaracterization of the findings of an economic study commissioned by VoteVets.org to examine the relationship between veterans who work in construction and prevailing-wage laws. A news release announcing the study declares that repealing or reforming, “prevailing wage at the state level will disproportionally hurt the hundreds of thousands post-9/11 veterans who are returning to the workforce.” In that same release VoteVets.org describes itself as “the largest progressive group of veterans in America.”
The study was conducted by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute, and the gist of the report is that because veterans work in the construction industry, and because construction workers are the workforce affected by prevailing-wage laws, any changes to prevailing-wage laws are a “veterans issue.”
Even while acknowledging that only a small minority of construction workers are veterans, the study goes to great lengths to argue that veterans as a population group are more likely than non-veterans to be in the construction trades.
The justification for this claim is that veterans make up a larger share of the construction workforce in 39 states than they do of the total workforce. For example, in Wisconsin veterans make up 5.48 percent of the total workforce, but they make up 8.3 percent of the construction trades.
But this calculation is hardly an accurate way to depict veteran participation in a particular industry because it makes it appear as if more veterans work in construction than in other industries. In addition to being a small minority of construction workers, veterans are a small percentage of the total workforce.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, younger veterans (post-1991) are less likely to work in construction than other industries. Referred to as Gulf War veterans (the first Gulf War was in 1991, the War on Terror is classified as the Second Gulf War in this Census data) they are more likely to be found working in management or protective service sectors than on a job site. A Census Bureau report on veteran employment describes it this way:
“Gulf War-era men were less likely to work in construction occupations and sales and related occupations, compared with nonveteran men.”
That statement blows a gigantic hole in the IEPI study which builds its entire premise on the claim that veterans are more likely to be working construction than nonveterans.
Another glaring flaw of the study is that it fails to put into context the number of construction jobs that fall under prevailing-wage requirements. In Wisconsin, only about 20 percent of all construction jobs are covered by prevailing-wage restrictions, according to a pro-prevailing wage estimate. That means that, even as 91.7 percent of construction workers in Wisconsin have never served in the military, 80 percent of all Wisconsin construction jobs never come under prevailing-wage requirements in the first place.
Nevertheless, the IEPI study summary claims, “Prevailing wage improves economic outcomes for veteran workers. Prevailing wage standards make construction employment more attractive for veterans.” But the actual study explicitly states: “Prevailing wage laws affect all workers the same regardless of race, gender, veteran status, or any other factor.”
So either prevailing wage is a veterans’ issue, as the first statement asserts, or it is not a veterans’ issue because it applies to all workers equally regardless of veteran status. This is a noteworthy point given that the vast majority of construction workers are not veterans.
Finally, the study authors make the eyebrow-raising claim that military service is closely related to construction projects that fall under prevailing-wage requirements.
“(B)oth military and civilian construction careers include elements of public service, from defending the country to developing the public infrastructure on which Americans rely,” they write.
Certainly there is job satisfaction to be found in both construction and military careers. But prevailing wage or no prevailing wage, most job sites in the U.S. don’t involve getting shot at; nor do superiors have the freedom to push employees to work far more than eight hours a day.
Labor unions and aligned think tanks and political groups are likely to continue using the guise of veterans’ issues as a cudgel to beat free-market policymakers over the head for daring to suggest reforms that save taxpayers’ money.
But that doesn’t mean they are right; veterans make up a significant part of the workforce. Still, this doesn’t mean increased government spending on labor costs for public works are somehow a veterans issue in the same way that, say, the health care shortcomings of the Veterans Administration are a veterans issue.
