...PDC construction wage policy will be amended Jan. 24
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programs when no women or minority
apprentices are otherwise available.”
The policy makes no reference to
open-shop contractors.
“The clear intent was to include
open-shop contractors as well,” Jack-
ley said. “It will be those types of tech-
nical changes” that the Board will
make on Jan. 24.
Other terms of the construction
wage policy include:
• PDC will appoint a Wage Rate
Oversight Group that includes PDC,
union and nonunion representatives,
women in trades, the minority com-
munity, the construction industry and
other stakeholders to review the affir-
mative action report and make recom-
mendations.
• Environmental remediation and
demolition shall be done consistent
with current BOLI rules.
• Contractors that are on the BOLI
list of ineligibles cannot participate in
construction projects subject to the
wage policy.
• Projects constructed privately that
include public and private ownership
may be separated for the purposes of
this policy.
• When the total floor area of pub-
licly-owned space is less than 50 per-
cent of the total floor area of the com-
bined public/private space, the policy
will not apply to the construction of
the privately-owned space unless that
portion of the project receives $1 mil-
lion or more in PDC resources.
• Any project that is constructed
which will be owned by the public is
subject to the policy.
Jackley told the NW Labor Press
that PDC will act as the monitor and
enforcer of the new construction wage
policy.
Labor Commissioner Dan Gardner
said his agency will continue enforc-
ing state prevailing wage laws. “Re-
gardless of their new policy, if we re-
ceive a complaint about a PDC
project, we will apply the state law as
Seattle stiffens wage enforcement on low-income housing projects
SEATTLE — Stricter enforcement
of prevailing wage rules on all city-fi-
nanced low-income housing projects
began Jan. 1 in Seattle.
The new policy revises how the City
of Seattle deals with developers, con-
tractors and subcontractors who receive
loans and other public subsidies for the
construction and rehabilitation of low-
income housing. Under the new policy:
• Developers will be required to
certify that their general contractors
and subcontractors are paying the state-
mandated prevailing wage for each job
classification.
• Contractors must pay either the
federal Davis-Bacon required wage or
the state prevailing wage, whichever is
higher.
• Contractors will be required to in-
form workers in English and Spanish
about prevailing wage laws and they
must maintain payroll records for in-
spection.
• Workers must sign in and out at
the job site daily, identifying the con-
tractor or subcontractor for whom they
are working, their job classification,
and their wage rate.
• The City’s Department of Execu-
tive Administration will conduct ran-
dom on-site audits to ensure wage rate
compliance, and a new City position
will be created to ensure compliance.
“This is an example of people in au-
thority doing the right thing for the
right reason,” said Eric Franklin,
spokesman for the Pacific Northwest
Regional Council of Carpenters, which
along with the Painters Union assisted
in drafting and moving the enforce-
ment policy forward.
Franklin said the city is not legally
obligated to pay prevailing wages on
low-income housing projects.
Adrienne Quinn, director of the Of-
fice of Housing, which administers the
programs and helps leverage additional
funding to develop projects, confirmed
that. “A prevailing wage policy is not
required,” she said. “These are internal
benchmarks set by the mayor and our
department.”
In 2002, the voters of Seattle passed
a seven-year, $86 million union-backed
property tax levy to provide affordable
housing opportunities for low-income
residents. The housing levy contained
language “encouraging” contractors to
comply with the City’s fair contracting
practices ordinance. The ordinance
“aspires to utilize” more women and
minority businesses, and contractors
that offer apprenticeship training, but
does not mandate it.
Mayor Greg Nickels and the Office
of Housing later added prevailing wage
benchmarks whereby contractors and
subcontractors on low-income housing
projects were required to sign docu-
ments stating that they paid employees
prevailing wages and benefits.
Quinn told the NW Labor Press that
her department looked at the paper-
work and that on its face, everything
looked fine. “We’re basically a bank.
Our employees are underwriters, so if
the records looked fine that was it.”
However, the Carpenters and
Painters unions had been logging in-
stances of contractors cheating workers
— who are primarily Latino — on
wages and benefits on several of the
housing projects. Union officials took
that information to Quinn.
“She was very bold. She put staff on
it, she held public meetings and basi-
cally pushed it forward,” said Clark
Gilman of the Carpenters Union.
“We did some followup (on the
union’s reports) and the answers we
got back from contractors were fishy,”
Quinn said. “It was clear (our bench-
marks) needed more teeth.”
Mayor Nickels has created a full-
time position to monitor the housing
contracts and to make sure contractors
abide by the rules.
Quinn said the City will withhold
payments to developers if it learns pre-
vailing wages are not being paid. “The
ultimate penalty is that they will not get
any future funding,” she said.
Two housing projects that recently
were bid out will have union contrac-
tors for the drywall, Quinn said. They
are the Downtown Emergency Ser-
vices Center, a 75 unit, $13 million
project; and the Capitol Hill Housing’s
Woodland Park Apartments, which
is18 units at a cost of $1.77 million.
it is currently written,” he said.
The threshold for applying state
prevailing wage rates on a public proj-
ect in Oregon is $50,000.
John Mohlis, executive secretary-
treasurer of the Columbia-Pacific
Building Trades Council, said the
PDC’s new construction wage policy
“is a good starting point. It’s not per-
fect, but there is a process for fine tun-
ing it.”
Mohlis was appointed by Mayor
Tom Potter to a vacant seat on the
PDC Board. His nomination was con-
firmed by City Council on Jan. 17.
Mohlis’ first Board meeting as a com-
missioner will be at the next regular
meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 24, when
amendments to the policy will be
heard. The meeting starts at 8 a.m. at
the Oregon Association of Minority
Entrepreneurs, 4134 N. Vancouver
Ave., Portland.
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