How To Become Immortal in the Government Contracts World -- the Origins of the Davis-Bacon Act

“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”

― Woody Allen, The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader

Here is the American Dream in a nutshell. Get elected to Congress. Put your name on consequential legislation. Have it endure through the ages. And become immortal. Your name will echo down the corridors of history, unlike the rest of us.  

There are many examples of this, but perhaps few more consequential that the example of the Davis-Bacon Act (“DBA”). Enacted in 1931, in the midst of the Great Depression, the DBA was meant to address the issue of wage busting on federal construction procurements and to stabilize the job market. A secondary racist reason, often cited by the Wall Street Journal, was to protect white worker union jobs from competition with minority workers willing to labor for less money and who were then excluded from union membership in the Jim Crow era.  A deflationary spiral had grip the job market, unemployment had hit new heights, and wages were rapidly falling. A panicked Republican Congress decided some kind of minimum prevailing wage standard  was needed because construction projects were being awarded to the lowest priced bidder, and that usually meant the bidder who paid the lowest possible wages. The intent was to help stabilize the market and ameliorate some of the conditions of the economic turmoil  which beset the country. 

Both Senator James J. Davis and Representative Robert L. Bacon were Republicans, and the law they sponsored was signed into effect by President Herbert Hoover, also a Republican. It was one of the ironic events of history now largely regretted by the modern Republican Party, which at least until up to the Trump era, spent every election Party Platform statement calling for the repeal of the DBA.   

Anyway, the DBA impacts millions of workers, and it has echoed down through 93 years of history, making both Senator Davis and Representative Bacon into legends. Sponsor a wage and hour law – become an immortal.