A House committee advanced Senate Bill 908 by 14 to 12, extending prevailing wage to off-site custom fabrication for public work

The committee split 14 to 12 along party lines; the Senate passed the bill 37 to 13

The vote split along party lines. All 14 Democrats on the committee, including Chair Jason Dawkins, who made the motion, voted yes, and all 12 Republicans voted no. Before that vote, the committee rejected an amendment from Rep. Barbara Gleim, 12 to 14, that the committee’s record describes as raising the prevailing wage threshold from $25,000 to $250,000. The bill page lists it as given first consideration and laid on the table the same day.

For the background on who the act covers and what it requires today, see how Pennsylvania’s Prevailing Wage Act applies to public construction jobs.

Shop hours on custom fabrication for a public project would carry the project’s prevailing rate

The act now covers construction, reconstruction, demolition, alteration and repair work, other than maintenance, paid for in whole or in part with a public body’s money when the project’s estimated total cost is over $25,000. Its definition of a covered worker leaves out material suppliers and their employees who do not perform services at the job site. Senate Bill 908, in the version the Senate passed (Printer’s No. 1804), changes both definitions.

• The bill adds custom fabrication to covered work and defines it as nonstandard goods or materials fabricated or assembled off-site and produced specifically for a public work project. It names plumbing and pipe-fitting, HVAC and refrigeration, sheet metal and duct, boiler, electrical, welding, mechanical insulation, ornamental iron, rebar assembly and sign work, along with prefabricated modules built to a project’s specifications. Structural steel members and precast concrete are excluded.
• Workers who custom-fabricate for the project, on or off the site, would count as covered workers. A supplier’s employees would stay outside the act unless their work is custom fabrication.
• The definition of public work would name HVAC duct cleaning as an exception to the maintenance exclusion.
• The rate for custom fabrication would be the prevailing rate for the craft in the locality where the public project is located, the same rate paid for that trade on site.
• A firm that contracts or subcontracts to custom-fabricate for a public work would face the same compliance and reporting requirements, penalties and enforcement as any other contractor or subcontractor, and the bid specifications would have to state the minimum rate for fabrication workers.
• Section 5 would add that workers must be paid the rate for their craft and may not be paid multiple rates on the same project.

The Senate also added two exclusions in June. Rehabilitation of a residential property with fewer than eight units would fall outside the act, though the bill keeps residential municipal housing authority property in a city of the first class, Philadelphia, inside it. School safety and security improvements would also fall outside the act; the bill ties them to the school safety sections of the Public School Code and caps them at a total project cost of $50,000. The $25,000 project threshold stays where it is. The changes would take effect 60 days after the bill becomes law.

Amendments to raise the $25,000 line to $250,000 or $2.5 million were both set aside

On June 10, before final passage, the Senate voted to table three Republican amendments, which set them aside without adopting them. Sen. Scott Martin offered one that would have raised the $25,000 threshold to $2.5 million, tabled 34 to 16, and another that would have struck the custom fabrication provisions, tabled 36 to 14. Sen. Dawn Keefer offered one that would have applied the bill’s changes only to cities of the first class, tabled 39 to 11.