Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Though Democrats in Iowa had a heck of a time enacting ‘prevailing wage’ requirements for public works projects at the state level this year, a similar federal proposal has faced considerably less controversy.
In fact, it is a Republican, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who is overseeing the expansion of the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act for President Barack Obama’s administration.
The Washington Independent’s Jefferson Morley reports:
Though stymied on the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to form unions, organized labor is about to claim a big consolation prize: the massive application of a law guaranteeing “prevailing wages” for hundreds of thousands of construction workers hired under President Obama’s economic stimulus program.
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood is now preparing guidelines that will expand the scope of the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, according to a department spokesperson.
“In some cases, the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage provisions will apply to federal construction contracts in the same manner as they currently apply,” said spokesperson Dolline Hatchett in an email. “In other instances, the prevailing wage provisions will apply to certain projects that may not have been subject to the Davis-Bacon provisions in the past.”
LaHood’s action will put a floor under wages paid for the more than 678,000 construction jobs (pdf) that the White House estimates will be created by the end of 2010. It also marks a sharp reversal of U.S. policy on public works projects under President Bush, who in September 2005 suspended Davis-Bacon in the Gulf States after Hurricane Katrina.
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