WEEKEND EDITION
August 13-14, 2005
In 1937 the Nevada Legislature passed a law that became known as the "Little Davis-Bacon Act." It was modeled on the 1931 federal law authored by Sen. James Davis, R-Pa., and Rep. Robert Bacon, R-N.Y. Both the federal and state laws required that workers on government construction projects be paid the "prevailing" local wage for that type of work, as determined by surveys. The laws were passed to prevent bidders on government projects from unfairly winning the contracts by presenting low bids based on use of unskilled (read cheap) labor.
Last week the Nevada Supreme Court sided with a decision by former state Labor Commissioner Terry Johnson, who had ruled that illegal immigrants were among the workers covered by the state's prevailing-wage law. The case involved five workers for City Plan Development, a company that had won a Clark County contract to build a fire station, which was completed in 1999. The state Labor Department under Johnson received a wage complaint from the workers, who claimed that they had received far less than prevailing wage. "City Plan was required to pay claimants the prevailing wage regardless of their alien status," the high court ruled.
The court reasoned that if companies with government contracts are allowed to pay illegal immigrants less than the prevailing wage it would "circumvent the purpose of the prevailing wage" laws. It also reasoned that such a practice would "only encourage others to hire undocumented aliens to perform necessary work."
The case reached the Supreme Court after administrative appeals to Johnson and an appeal to District Court had failed. We were glad to see that the appeal to the state's highest court failed, too. Our reasoning is simple: Equal pay for equal work. It's only right.
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