WHAT'S NEW?  

As we roll toward the end of the year, many legislatures are finalizing final laws impacting prevailing wage and many states are finalizing new regulatory changes for the coming year. Most states implement new law changes on January 1st. You should be checking in each state in which you work for new upcoming changes.

In California, AB 889 confirms an employer’s right to use a prevailing wage pension plan without having to amortize/annualize the contributions. However, it does require that all other types of contributions, which are not made pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement, will need to be calculated/amortized based on a 40 hour workweek (2080 hours per year). Anyone who is using some type of hybrid supplemental unemployment plan or other plan which allows contributions which are not annualized, should check with their plan administrator to see if the plan will remain valid in California for the purpose of taking prevailing wage credit.

Training Opportunities

January 13th What’s New in Prevailing Wage For more information or to sign up contact the California Special Districts Association www.csda.net

February 1-4 CAPPO (California Association of Public Procurement Officers) conference in San Diego. Deborah is speaking on Feb 2 and 4 on both California and federal prevailing wage. https://www.cappo.org/page/CAPPOConference

If you need more training, Deborah Wilder is the presenter on the LCPtracker Academy Prevailing wage workshops. Go to www.LCPtracker.com and select the education tab.

Want to schedule your own prevailing wage workshop?

We will customize a workshop or webinar for you and your Agency/Account. Contact us at: info@ccmilcp.com 

ANSWER: 

All federal agencies and grant recipients, where Federal Davis Bacon prevailing wage applies, are required to provide you with both contract language informing you of your federal obligations AND the applicable wage determination. That wage determination (if it changes between the time of the original solution and the bid date) is required to be updated 10 days prior to the bid date.  

The first thing would be to go to the agency or grant recipient and tell them they have given you incomplete information and they need to get you the correct information. However, that only works if the agency or the grant recipient understands their obligations. Most recently when a contractor took this approach, the grant recipient told the contractor to look at other county determinations, contact the State for a prevailing wage rate or just “do your best” to figure it out. All of those answers are wrong.

If you need to identify the proper federal prevailing wage determination, contact someone you trust to help you. This can be an attorney or a trusted labor compliance consultant. They should take you to www.sam.gov and then select the proper wage determination based on the State, County and type of work you are performing. Some wage determinations have 15-20 updates per year, so it is important to select the proper “modification” to the wage determination based on the bid date (assuming the project was awarded within 90 days of the bid date.