The Department of Labor announced Tuesday that it will publish a rule updating the Davis-Bacon Act, which sets the prevailing wages contractors must pay workers on federal projects. The rule, first announced in March 2022, will restore the DOL’s definition of prevailing wage to make it equivalent to the wage paid to at least 30% of workers, rather than 50% of workers, in a given trade in a locality, according to a White House fact sheet. The Davis-Bacon Act, originally passed in 1931, uses pay surveys administered by the DOL to set the prevailing wage in a federally funded project’s location. The new rule also makes the process of updating prevailing wage rates easier, according to the DOL, by giving the department the authority to adopt prevailing wages determined by state and local governments, issue wage determinations for labor classifications where insufficient data was received through its wage survey process and update outdated wage rates. Lastly, it adds an anti-retaliation provision in contract clauses to protect workers who raise concerns from being fired or punished.
https://www.constructiondive.com/news/labor-dol-update-davis-bacon-prevailing-wage-laws/690226/