The name is absent

25

construction work in any state and undermine the labor conditions and the labor wages in
that State ... The least the federal government can do is comply with the local standards
of wages and labor prevailing in the locality where the building construction is to take
place.” (U.S. Congress, 1927.)

Bacon’s proposal was eventually enacted into law in 1931, and it took another four years
before the definition of the prevailing wage was determined. While we know of no
formal analysis of the political economy of Davis-Bacon, the facts are that the
regulations, and the manner of their enforcement, meant that wages were often set
according to the union scale and that a 1935 amendment of the Act reduced the minimum
contract amount covered to $2,000 (as sought the union movement). More recent
criticism of Davis-Bacon has centered on its purported discriminatory intent: on the facts
that the Alabama construction workers in question were black (contested) and most major
construction workers at that time excluded blacks (uncontested) (cf. Bernstein, 1993;
Philips, Mangum, Waitzman, and Yeagle, 1995; see also Kessler and Katz, 1999).

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