Davis–Bacon Act of 1931 - Wikipedia
At the time of original passage,
Jim Crow Laws were in effect throughout the Southern United States. During
World War I, immigration from Europe fell dramatically at precisely the time that Northern industry required additional labor for the war effort.
[33] As a result, northern industry and entrepreneurs began to recruit laborers from the South.[33] This brought about or accelerated the Great Migration in which black (and white) laborers from the South came North in search of better pay and opportunity.
The migration in turn created new demographic challenges in the North. White workers were competing against new labor; in some cases,
the black workers were used as pawns in an effort to break unions.[33] There were widespread efforts to recruit black workers[33][34] and in reaction, efforts to thwart recruitment.[33][35] Black migrants were restricted to specific neighborhoods in northern cities where the buildings were in poor condition and rents were high, forcing them to live in dense conditions.[33]
In that context, the protests against the Long Island hospital built with migrant labor can be seen for what they were: resistance outside of the Jim Crow South to black workers.
[8] During this time, complaints about black workers taking federal construction jobs appear sporadically through the legislation history of both prior bills that anticipated Davis-Bacon, and Davis-Bacon itself.[6][36] On the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressman Upshaw said: "You will not think that a southern man is more than human if he smiles over the fact of your reaction to that real problem you are confronted with in any community with a superabundance or large aggregation of negro labor."[8][37] U.S. Congressman John J. Cochran (D-Missouri) reported that he had "received numerous complaints in recent months about southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South".[8] U.S. Congressman Clayton Allgood (D-Alabama) reported on "cheap colored labor" that "is in competition with white labor throughout the country".[8][38] [39]
Despite the initial complaints about the use of migrant workers, the Act does not require that contractors show that workers engaged are local residents, but rather requires that laborers be paid the local prevailing wage. Due to the way the data were collected at that time and due to the fact that construction trades were heavily unionized at that time by craft unions, “prevailing wage” effectively meant “union journeyman wage” as discussed above. Unions operate by negotiating for higher wages, and then working to restrict those eligible for the higher wages to union membership.
[40] Craft unions did not admit black apprentices, and therefore black laborers did not have the opportunity to advance to journeyman status.[8][41][42][43][44][45] According to Bernstein,
“as of 1940 blacks composed 19 percent of the 435,000 unskilled "construction laborers" in the United States and 45 percent of the 87,060 in the South”,[8] and according to Hill, "the increase of Negro participation in building trades apprenticeship training programs rose only from 1.5% to 2%" in New York between 1950 and 1960.[43]:116 Furthermore, Hill pointed out that "
ecause the National Labor Relations Board has done little to enforce the anti-closed shop provisions of the Taft Hartley Act, building trades unions affiliated to the AFL-CIO in most instances are closed unions operating closed shops".[43]:113 Therefore, the requirements and mechanisms of the Davis–Bacon Act necessarily prevented black laborers from participating in federally funded construction projects. “According to a study on youth and minority employment published by the Congressional Joint Economic Committee on July 6, 1977, Davis–Bacon wage requirements discourage nonunion contractors from bidding on Federal construction work, thus harming minority and young workers who are more likely to work in the nonunionized sector of the construction industry.”[12] Thus, even if racism was not the intent, racial discrimination was a result of the law initially.
Subsequent developments
The Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the American Federation of Labor in 1935. The AFL was predominantly made up of craft unions, most of which disallowed black members. The CIO was integrationist. In the years that followed, the AFL and CIO moved towards each other and toward integration. By the time they re-united in 1955, unions were much less discriminatory. Even more recently, rules introduced by the Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan administrations[8] have reduced the discriminatory effects of the Davis–Bacon Act. Black interest groups have found common cause with unions[24] and the NAACP passed a resolution in 1993 in support of the DBA.[46]
See also
