Philadelphia has a problem: It doesn't have enough jobs that can sustain families. The area's lopsided labor market is well documented in a widely publicized report by the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board, A Tale of Two Cities. But one of the bright spots in the region's employment picture is the non-residential construction industry.

While many manufacturing jobs have disappeared, and trucking has seen wage declines since the 1970s, construction projects create large numbers of middle-class jobs. That's partly due to prevailing-wage laws that have recently come under attack.

The non-residential construction industry also has extensive support structures enabling workers with a high-school education to develop their skills, advance, and gain security while performing well for their employers. These start with three-to-five-year apprenticeship programs that blend classroom training on workers' own time with on-the-job supervision and mentoring.

This system is not the result of the magic of the market or a government program. It is paid for by contractors and unions through contributions to training, health-benefit, and pension funds. These funds make employment in the Philadelphia construction industry a rewarding, lifelong career.

State and federal prevailing-wage laws, which set pay and benefits for public projects according to regional standards, also help support careers in construction. These laws ensure that the purchasing power of the public sector does not support businesses that undercut the local wage and benefit scale while skimping on training, health, and safety.

In many parts of the country, institutions and laws that promote high-wage, high-skill construction have broken down. As a result, the construction sector is becoming more and more lopsided, with a few jobs at the top that pay well and many more at the bottom that do not pay enough to support a family.

In places such as Florida, Texas, and Arizona, immigrants are the victims of this restructuring.

In the Philadelphia area, the residential construction industry has already moved toward a polarized distribution of wages, taking a toll on workers, families, children, and communities.

Some critics have argued that prevailing-wage laws are racist because they benefit unions that keep out minorities. The evidence suggests otherwise: African Americans make up 19 percent of the unionized construction workforce in the five-county Philadelphia metropolitan area, while they make up just 6 percent of the nonunion construction workforce.

Furthermore, half the African Americans working in construction in the Philadelphia area are in unions, compared with less than a quarter of the whites in the sector. As a result, African Americans benefit more than other groups from the continuing strength of the high-wage,
high-skill construction model. And they would suffer more than other groups if that approach were abandoned.

Rather than destroying some of the best family-sustaining jobs in our economy by casting aside prevailing-wage laws, what about creating the conditions in which residential construction and burgeoning fields - such as weatherization, energy efficiency, and other green industries - can provide middle-class jobs?

That would systematically expand opportunities for women and men of all races. African Americans, the growing Hispanic population, and other demographic groups should all have the chance to enter an apprenticeship and a family-supporting career.

When the economy recovers, an influx of high-quality new recruits could help the construction industry cope with an upcoming demographic cliff - the large number of retirements expected in the next decade.

Revitalized to better develop and take advantage of workers' skills, the construction industry might provide a model for transforming our regional labor market to help us become one Philadelphia.

Mark Price is a labor economist at the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg.

Aarticle is available online at: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20090508_Keep_prevailing-wage_law...