Prevailing wage law helps construction workers, veterans

I am writing in response to the letter from Carol Veillette on 3/8/17. I am also a Marine Corps vet, 1971-75, and am from a family of veterans — every one of us packing a lunch and going to work each morning to support our families and make a better life for our children. I would guess 90 percent of Marine Corps vets are working guys.

Ms. Veillette should think of the Marine Corps motto “Semper Fi,” always faithful, when she wants to cut their wages. If Ms. Veillette really knows about construction opportunities for veterans, she would know that there is a shortage of skilled labor in this country, so much so that the more unscrupulous contractors in this area are using temp agencies that provide immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala. Most don’t speak any English. Funny how you don’t see our new president’s deportation force going on these jobs.

Ms. Veillette would like to be a state representative, feeding at the public trough. She ran in 2014. Now she parrots the right wing talking points of David Humphries and the Koch brothers, who have donated, along with other millionaires and billionaires from outside Missouri, tens of millions and probably hundreds of millions since 1978 to enact a right-to-work law that Missouri voters have rejected time after time. Ask yourself why they would do this. They want to fill their bank accounts and control the working class.

The prevailing wage law protects all construction workers. It has nothing to do with whether you are union or non-union. Contractors send their payroll records every year for each county worked in to the state, which sets each county’s prevailing wage rate. The men and women who build this nation risk their health and years of their lives to do hard and sometimes very dangerous work.

I carry 28 scars from various injuries and surgeries getting body parts repaired or replaced due mostly to the hard work of electrical construction since 1978. I would proudly live this life again. Some of the finest and most honorable people I ever met, including my father and brother, do this type of work, some veterans, some not.

Ms. Veillette talks about how the prevailing wage primarily benefits large union contractors. In southwest Missouri, most prevailing wage jobs go to non-union shops. The ratio is not even close, probably 10 to 1. There are over 200 non-union electrical contractors and 10 union electrical contractors in the Springfield area. No one in construction wants to repeal prevailing wage laws. It protects both non-union and union workers so they can earn a fair wage for a fair day’s work doing the hard and dangerous work of construction.

We continue to have a nation to build. Veterans and non-veterans alike do not need to be preached to by a politician who probably has never held a tool in her hand and probably never been on a construction site, unless it was for a photo-op, as some politicians tend to do.

Raymond Wilson is from Strafford