Obama's Labor Department Proposes Prevailing Wage Rule

      Another story about something the Obama Administration is doing right that has gotten little play is a new proposal by the Labor Department for the "prevailing wage rule" in handing out worker visas. What this does effectively is no longer allow U.S. employers to take advantage of H-2B to low ball unemployed Americans.

     What this reform will do is state that " Employers must first offer jobs to U.S. workers, at the prevailing wage in their community, before they can get permission to import foreign workers."

     "This is good news for U.S. workers, since the H-2B visa allows about 66,000 foreign workers a year to take jobs unemployed Americans could do. It’s a major improvement over the Bush-era regulation under which employers could offer substantially lower wages to U.S. workers and then recruit for guest workers outside the country.

      "The repealed Bush rule allowed Maryland landscaping companies, for example, to make a token “offer” of jobs to U.S. workers at about $3 an hour less than the locally prevailing wage — that is, at $3 an hour less than the average wage paid by their competitors. Since most workers in Baltimore who were used to being paid $12.80 an hour wouldn’t apply for the same job paying $9.12 an hour, the companies were then free to import lower-paid foreign guest workers. Similar wage-cutting and substitution occurred for carpenters and plasterers, hotel housekeepers, short-order cooks and a dozen other occupations. Altogether, almost 5,000 H-2B guest workers were certified for jobs in Maryland last year — jobs that ought to go to Maryland workers at prevailing community wage standards."

    "This was a bad policy at several levels. With Baltimore’s unemployment hovering around 8 percent, it makes no sense to import foreign workers for these jobs. It makes no sense to undercut employers who are paying decent wages by allowing competitors to import cheaper guest workers. And in a nation where wages have stagnated and middle class families are struggling, it’s crazy to undermine the wages of landscaping, hotel and construction employees."

     http://www.epi.org/publication/prevailing-wage-good-for-maryland/

     This is one of the many positive policies that the Obama Administration has pursued recently to little fanfare.