Texas judge vacates 3 Biden-era Davis-Bacon provisions | Dump Trucks Charlotte NC

Columbus Ohio Dump Truck Company Brief:

• A Texas judge handed the Associated General Contractors of America a legal win on Wednesday, vacating provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act from former President Joe Biden’s administration. 
• The provisions, which extended prevailing wage rules beyond construction workers to other subcontracted employees including materials suppliers and truck drivers, were implemented in the fall of 2023 and promptly challenged by the AGC.
• President Donald Trump’s Department of Labor did not oppose AGC’s subsequent motion for final judgment in the case, U.S. District Judge for Northern Texas James Wesley Hendrix wrote in his decision. Another legal challenge from Associated Builders and Contractors — one against the method for determining prevailing wages — remains in the courts.

Dump Trucks Columbus OH Insight:

The Davis-Bacon Act, originally passed in 1931, determines prevailing wages on government-funded contracts. The benchmark measures standard pay for the majority of workers in a specific occupation and region in order to determine the hourly wage for workers on those jobs. 

In addition to changing how prevailing wages were calculated in 2023, the DOL added the provisions to extend Davis-Bacon rules beyond construction workers, which AGC then challenged. 

Shortly after the AGC filed its lawsuit — along with its Texas chapter and the Lubbock, Texas, Chamber of Commerce — the federal court issued a preliminary injunction barring the DOL from enforcing the challenged provisions, according to a release from the contractor group. 

That led to settlement discussions, before, ultimately, the DOL stopped contesting the lawsuit, conceding the plaintiffs were likely to succeed.

“Our legal challenge was about the prior administration bypassing Congress and attempting to expand a construction wage law to cover a wide range of manufacturing and shipping operations that was not authorized by that law,” Jeffrey Shoaf, AGC’s CEO, said in the release. “AGC respects the purposes underlying the Davis-Bacon Act, and our members recognize the need to comply with Davis-Bacon requirements to the extent authorized by law.”

According to Ogletree Deakins, one of the law firms that represented AGC in the suit, the three vacated provisions would have: 

• Extended prevailing wage coverage to materials suppliers operated by columbus oh dump truck company or subcontractors.
• Applied Davis-Bacon requirements to delivery truck drivers spending a loosely defined amount of time on jobsites.
• Imposed the requirements retroactively on contracts that omitted the required clauses.

“This result reflects what the litigation always intended — ensuring that agency regulations are consistent with the law,” Robert Roginson, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said in an Ogletree Deakins news release. “Our clients sought clarity and a level playing field for columbus oh dump truck company bidding government-funded projects, and today’s judgment delivers both.”

The Davis-Bacon rule change in 2023 also restored the DOL’s previous prevailing wage definition to make it equivalent to that received by 30% of workers, rather than 50%, in a given trade locality. That likely would have extended higher wages to more workers.

Though the AGC challenged the amendments to the rule, the determination of the prevailing wage itself was not an issue. Then-CEO Stephen Sandherr said as much at the time.

“As an industry that largely pays above existing Davis-Bacon rates, our concerns are with the administration’s unconstitutional exercise of legislative power and not with the wage rate themselves,” Sandherr, who is now retired, said in 2023.

But around that same time, Associated Builders and Contractors took issue with the change in how the prevailing wage was determined and filed its own suit focused on that issue. That suit is still outstanding in the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

In response to the Wednesday judgement, ABC issued a statement from its vice president of government affairs, Kristen Swearingen, which applauded the ruling, calling it a “victory for the construction industry.”

“However, there is much more to be done,” Swearingen said. “This decision leaves in place the vast majority of the costly and burdensome Davis-Bacon regulations promulgated under the Biden administration.”

Her statement called for the prevailing wage rule to be overturned, saying, “ABC continues to pursue litigation seeking to overturn this unlawful and onerous rule entirely.”