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Fight for Prevailing Wage

The fight to keep the prevailing wage in a little city has been ongoing for three years. The fight is between a supposed nonprofit corporation and the City of Redding against the unions in northern California. The so-called nonprofit, Turtle Bay Museum, wants to build a 5-star Sheraton hotel as a funding source for its enterprises. The case went to the courts and labor won. Now the Turtle Bay wants to go back to court, but this time labor is in for the long hall. This win for labor or loss will affect all of California, and could even set a precedent for the rest of the nation. For this reason alone labor must win, and in this case Turtle Bay needs the hotel more than the labor needs the jobs for labor will not miss out on a thing if this hotel is not build. They have nothing now so if the hotel isn’t built they won’t be out of work, but if the prevailing wage is overturned, unions will lose a lot more than this one job. We can kiss the prevailing wage jobs goodbye, and construction jobs will truly be slave wages. The irony is that the prevailing wage was written by GOP-elected representatives: Davis and Bacon. The GOP seems to have forgotten this part of its history. Maybe a history lesson is in order. I am sure the Tea party faction of the GOP of today would have invited Davis and Bacon for dinner without the two men knowing they were on the menu. The GOP does eat its own. I wonder when the GOP members will figure this out and start to support their own best interest. The hotel, if prevailing wage is in place, would put $1 million to $3 million in the pockets of our local workers, which would be spent in Redding and the taxes would go to Shasta County and sales taxes to the City of Redding. So it this going to be another dumb, stupid T-party shoot yourself in the foot tactic that we tend to do up here most of the time?
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