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Gary Wetzel: Repealing Wisconsin’s prevailing wage law would hurt veterans

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GUEST COLUMN
Feb 21, 2017

SOUTH MILWAUKEE — I am a proud military veteran, Medal of Honor recipient, American Legion member and retired operating engineer. Though retired, I am an active advocate for veterans, their medical care, job opportunities and family sustaining wages.

Specifically, I am concerned about a repeal of Wisconsin’s prevailing wage law and the negative impact it would have on veterans.

Wisconsin legislators are threatening a rollback of the prevailing wage law that would mean a significant cut in wages for anyone — union or non-union — working in construction. The Wisconsin American Legion understands the seriousness of the situation and recently passed a resolution calling for veterans to receive employment preference for projects that receive state, county and municipal grants and contracts. It also calls for wages to be paid at a family-sustaining level (as set by federal guidelines mirroring our state prevailing wage law) to prevent the financial exploitation of veterans.

When I came back from the Vietnam War, I was one shot-up man. Almost exactly 49 years ago, our helicopter was shot down near Ap Dong An, and I lost one of my arms. My crew members were either dead or soon-to-be dead, because the helicopter was on fire and the enemy had us pinned down. I grabbed the ’copter’s machine gun and returned fire with my one good arm. I survived that day with a few others and was awarded the nation’s highest award for valor by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

When I came back, a career in the operating engineers offered me training, a community and a good living. Transitioning to civilian life was hard, but having a job to support a family helped make that transition easier. I operated heavy machinery with one arm for 40 years.

In Wisconsin, veterans make up 8.3 percent of the construction workforce, which is significantly higher than the percentage of veterans in the general workforce. Employment in the construction industry is projected to grow by over 14,000 jobs between now and 2022. In other words, Wisconsin has a real opportunity to put veterans to work in an industry they already gravitate toward.

Opponents of prevailing wage policies argue that repeal saves money. They claim a low-skilled, undertrained construction worker making rock-bottom wages will produce the same product as a higher-skilled, professionally trained craftsman. I can tell you from experience that is simply not true.

What low-road contractors save in labor costs never materializes as savings for taxpayers. That’s because taxpayers end up footing the bill for reduced worksite efficiency, higher injury rates, and the prospect of needing to go back and fix work that wasn’t done right the first time by a contractor who by then is long gone, resulting in higher material and energy costs.

This is not a union versus non-union issue. All workers in the construction industry benefit from prevailing wage laws. Prevailing wage laws simply ensure workers building our vital infrastructure receive a fair wage. If you cut construction worker wages by repealing prevailing wage laws — which everyone agrees will happen if prevailing wage laws are eliminated — veterans will be harder hit because veterans are more likely to work in the construction industry.

We are veterans who want our voices heard and have a deep desire to continue proudly serving this great state and country by building safer roads, schools and communities for our families. Let us send a loud message to our legislative leaders — protect job opportunities and wages for our veterans.

Wetzel, of South Milwaukee, is a member of Legion Post 434 in Oak Creek.

Ex Vice President of ABC Government Affairs to be US DOL Cheif

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by Justin Elliott
ProPublica, Feb. 8, 2017, 11:42 a.m.

The president has cultivated a relationship with the building trades unions. But early hires at the Department of Labor are opponents of wage standards for construction contracts.

Last month, President Donald Trump hosted the chiefs of several building trades unions at the White House in a meeting notable for how friendly it was given that they had endorsed Hillary Clinton in the campaign.

In a particularly glowing statement after the meeting, Terry O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, said Trump “has shown that he respects laborers who build our great nation, and that they will be abandoned no more.” That was in response to the administration’s effort to restart two controversial pipeline projects.

But the recent hiring at the Department of Labor of Geoffrey Burr, the former chief lobbyist of the construction industry’s trade group, has worker advocates alarmed.

It also highlights the dilemma of the building trades unions, the segment of organized labor that has been most friendly to Trump: They largely support his agenda on infrastructure and trade even as he is assembling a Department of Labor team that is hostile to unions and cherished wage standards on government contracts.

“What does it mean that we are putting people in charge of the Department of Labor, which is meant to be the strongest advocate for workers within the administration, who built their careers around advocating dismantling protections for workers?” asked Karla Walter, director of the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Burr, now a member of the Trump beachhead team at the Department of Labor, spent seven years as the vice president for government affairs at the Associated Builders and Contractors.

The group is a fierce opponent of the law that gives workers on government construction contracts the right to be paid in line with local prevailing wages — a rate determined by the Department of Labor. The idea of the Depression-era law, called the Davis-Bacon Act, is to protect workers from being undercut by lower-paid, less-skilled workers from other areas of the country.

Republicans and companies have argued the law inflates government spending and other costs. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, introduced a bill last month to repeal it. Unions champion the law on the grounds that it protects good jobs and incentivizes higher productivity.

Disclosure records show that in 2015 Burr and his colleagues lobbied the House on a bill to repeal Davis-Bacon as well as on an amendment to “prohibit use of funds to implement, administer, or enforce the prevailing wage requirements under what is commonly known as the Davis-Bacon Act.”

Burr and his colleagues also lobbied the Department of Labor itself on Davis-Bacon-related surveys that set prevailing wage levels for jobs in different regions of the country.

As a member of the Trump beachhead team, Burr is now engaged on Davis-Bacon matters at the department, according to a staffer familiar with his work.

A Department of Labor spokeswoman declined to elaborate on Burr’s role and the future of Davis-Bacon. “It would be premature to speculate any policy decisions till the secretary is confirmed,” Jillian Rogers said.

(There is still no hearing date for Trump’s nominee to run the department, Andrew Puzder, who recently revealed he hired an undocumented household employee. Burr is in line to be Puzder’s chief of staff, Politico reported Tuesday.)

Another member of the Department of Labor beachhead team, Nathan Mehrens, has publicly blasted Davis-Bacon. Mehrens previously was president of the group Americans for Limited Government.

Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute, who has testified in support of the law before Congress, says Burr’s hiring is unsettling because the Department of Labor has some discretion in the setting of prevailing wages.

“They have latitude about what they survey and how often they survey,” Eisenbrey said. “It wouldn’t take a genius to identify areas and work hard to get nonunion employers to answer the survey, and that could lower the prevailing wage.”

The Department of Labor is also tasked with enforcement: Contractors that violate the law can be barred from getting future contracts. Bloomberg BNA reported in December that some management-side lawyers are already expecting the Trump Labor Department to ease up on enforcement.

The unions who met the president last month do not seem eager to pick a public fight with the Trump administration. Spokespeople for North America’s Building Trades Unions and the United Association of Plumbers and Fitters declined to comment on Burr’s hiring at the department. The Laborers’ International Union of North America and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters did not respond to requests for comment.

It’s not clear where the president himself stands on Davis-Bacon. One union leader told The New York Times after the meeting last month that the issue had been raised with Trump, but that the president had avoided taking a position.

Have information or ideas about labor policy under the Trump administration? Email justin@propublica.org.

Construction Wage Rollback Bill Lands in Senate

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By Tyrone Richardson
January 25, 2017

Construction businesses would be allowed to trim wages on federally funded infrastructure projects under a bill Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) introduced Jan. 24, he said during a Senate hearing.

The legislation, the Transportation Investment Recalibration to Equality (TIRE) Act, would suspend the Davis-Bacon Act’s prevailing wage requirements for transportation and other infrastructure projects. The 86-year-old law requires construction businesses to pay their employees a prevailing wage set by the Labor Department for work on public infrastructure contracts. The union-level wages are as much as 22 percent above market rates, according to studies.

“The bottom line is, every time Davis-Bacon applies to a federal project, less money is going to construction and more money is going to meet onerous wage requirements,” Flake said on the Senate floor.

This legislation marks the latest Republican attempt to limit or repeal the Davis-Bacon Act. It will need the backing of at least some Democrats to get the 60 votes to avoid a filibuster in the Senate. The bill didn’t have any co-sponsors as of late afternoon Jan. 24. It stands to get some resistance from labor unions and some Democrats who have lauded the law as a means to offer strong wages for the industry.

Democrats Willing to Agree?

That includes Democrats such as Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who told Bloomberg BNA Jan. 19 that he wouldn’t support “efforts to chip away at worker protections and wages.”

Brown’s comments could be echoed by many other Democrats since the legislation is a “stand-alone measure,” Paul DeCamp, an administrator of the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division under President George W. Bush, told Bloomberg BNA Jan. 24.

“Its only effect would be to remove the prevailing wage requirement from future federal highway projects, without any countervailing provisions to address Democrats’ policy preferences,” he said. “But if this bill gets packaged with other measures, such as a commitment to a certain level of infrastructure funding, then perhaps the chances of passage improve.”

Republican Attempts to Alter Davis-Bacon Act

There have been numerous attempts to undo the measure throughout the years. One of the most recent came in July 2015, when Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced the Davis-Bacon Repeal Act, which was co-sponsored by eight other Republicans. The proposed legislation never moved out of committee.

Flake’s office released a written statement Jan. 24 arguing the benefits of suspending the prevailing wage requirements. It said research by the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University found that Davis-Bacon wage mandates “drove up labor costs by more than $2 billion dollars in 2016 alone. That figure amounts to nearly 10 percent of all federal construction spending for 2016.”

A 2008 study by the institute concluded that wages mandated by the Davis-Bacon Act were about 22 percent above market wages.

Flake told Bloomberg BNA Jan. 17 that he is confident he can rally support for the bill from both sides of the aisle. The measure is designed to curry favor with President Donald Trump, who has made infrastructure spending a key priority, he said.

Flake reiterated the importance of shrinking expenses during his speech Jan. 24.

“Fixing our nation’s crumbling infrastructure is a top priority for many in Congress, and the new administration has touted a large infrastructure package as one of its major agenda items,” he said. “However, despite the bipartisan consensus on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for infrastructure investment, visions for the road ahead diverge.”

Officials with the Trump administration weren’t immediately available for comment Jan. 24.

To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Opfer in Washington atcopfer@bna.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Peggy Aulino atmaulino@bna.com; Terence Hyland at thyland@bna.com; Christopher Opfer atcopfer@bna.com

Copyright © 2017 The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Sources: Trump labor pick Andrew Puzder has voiced second thoughts about nomination

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By John King, CNN Chief National Correspondent

Updated 1:48 PM ET, Tue January 17, 2017

Washington (CNN)President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be labor secretary has voiced second thoughts in recent days, because of a relentless barrage of criticism from Democrats, labor unions and other liberal groups, a business ally and GOP sources tell CNN.
Andy Puzder is the CEO of the company that owns the Hardees and Carl’s Jr. fast food chains.

“He may be bailing,” said a Republican source plugged into the Trump transition effort. “He is not into the pounding he is taking, and the paperwork.”

A Trump transition spokesperson declined to comment, but later pointed to a tweet made by Puzder after CNN’s report, which said: “I am looking forward to my hearing.”

Democrats and their allies have launched an aggressive campaign against Puzder, who opposes key Democratic workplace priorities, including the goal of a $15 federal minimum wage.

His required ethics and financial paperwork also has not yet been posted by the Office of Government Ethics, which makes the filings public after nominees for top federal positions detail how they plan to comply with federal ethics rules regarding financial holdings.

Puzder’s confirmation hearings was initially scheduled for this week. It is now on hold, and likely will not be held until next month.

It is not unusual for nominees from the private sector to be taken aback by the harsh political climate that often greets new presidential appointees.

To that end, two Republican sources did not dispute but cautioned against reading too much into word of second thoughts. One of them added that “Trump loves it and wants the fight,” and said it was his information that senior transition officials were aware of Puzder’s concerns and urging him to stay in the fight.

Union members say lawmakers launching ‘attack on the working people’

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BY JOHN CHEVES AND JACK BRAMMER
jcheves@herald-leader.com

FRANKFORT

Angry labor union members on Saturday said they don’t know how they became public enemy No. 1 in Kentucky’s 2017 legislative session.

Hundreds of workers in boots and heavy coats poured onto every public floor of the state Capitol to loudly protest final passage of three bills that they say will weaken unions and reduce construction workers’ wages.

“It’s an attack on the working people,” said Chris Kendall, 44, a member of Local 184 of the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union in Paducah.

“It’s almost like we’re the enemy somehow, that it’s the politicians against us,” Kendall said. “And all we’re trying to do is earn an honest day’s wage.”

Said Bruce Rowe, a Pike County truck driver who belongs to Local 14581 of United Steelworkers, “This will just be awful for our communities. Once you cut our pay, your tax base goes down, and we’ve got less money to spend at Wal-Mart and buying cars and getting groceries for our families and shoes for our kids.”

House Bill 1 will let workers avoid paying union dues even if they get the benefits of a union-negotiated workplace contract. House Bill 3 will repeal the prevailing wage, a minimum salary paid to construction workers on local government projects. And Senate Bill 6 will require workers to “opt in” to having union dues withheld from their paychecks.

Taken together, these bills will make life tougher for blue-collar workers in Kentucky, protesters said Saturday.

“These are just union-busting bills. They’re not going to improve the economy any. They just bust up the unions and make it harder for workers to be represented,” said Vernon Soder, 42, a member of Local 20 of the International Union of Elevator Contractors in Louisville.

The union workers said they already represent a small and shrinking part of the state’s labor pool. Union members made up 11 percent of the workforce in Kentucky in 2015, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Why would they want any more of our pie? Why do they need to break us up any more?” Kendall said. “There’s not even many union jobs available. You have to really want one to get one because they’re so competitive.”

Repealing the prevailing wage, which guarantees a base rate of $20 to $30 an hour for skilled construction workers depending on their job and location, will cut workers’ pay nearly in half, Kendall said.

“The prevailing wage is a minimum wage for skilled workers,” Kendall said. “If you do away with that, that’s gonna cut the pay of all your skilled workers, union and non-union, on public construction projects and private. It’ll just come down to where you have the illegals and other unskilled labor doing the work as cheaply as possible, and it won’t be half as good.”

“These are just union-busting bills. They’re not going to improve the economy any. They just bust up the unions and make it harder for workers to be represented,” said Vernon Soder, 42, a member of Local 20 of the International Union of Elevator Contractors in Louisville.

The union workers said they already represent a small and shrinking part of the state’s labor pool. Union members made up 11 percent of the workforce in Kentucky in 2015, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Why would they want any more of our pie? Why do they need to break us up any more?” Kendall said. “There’s not even many union jobs available. You have to really want one to get one because they’re so competitive.”

Repealing the prevailing wage, which guarantees a base rate of $20 to $30 an hour for skilled construction workers depending on their job and location, will cut workers’ pay nearly in half, Kendall said.

“The prevailing wage is a minimum wage for skilled workers,” Kendall said. “If you do away with that, that’s gonna cut the pay of all your skilled workers, union and non-union, on public construction projects and private. It’ll just come down to where you have the illegals and other unskilled labor doing the work as cheaply as possible, and it won’t be half as good.”

Bill Londrigan, president of the Kentucky AFL-CIO, said some union members who came to the Capitol in recent days to protest legislation are social conservatives who voted for Republican politicians. Now they’re watching a newly Republican-led legislature pass measures that will cut their paychecks, Londrigan said.

“Believe me, we’re well aware that many of our members went to the polls last November and voted the straight Republican ticket to elect Donald Trump, not thinking about who else they were putting into local and state office and how that was going to impact their families,” Londrigan said in an interview.

“So that’s why we’re bringing them up here now, so they can see the consequences of their actions,” Londrigan said. “And maybe the next time they will believe their unions when we tell them to vote for their own economic interests.”

Kentucky Republicans Pass Right-To-Work, Dropping The Hammer On Unions

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By Dave Jamelson and Travis Waldron
01/07/2017 12:06 pm ET

Organized labor suffered its first major legislative setback due to the 2016 elections on Saturday, when Kentucky Republicans gave final approval to right-to-work legislation and repealed the state’s prevailing wage law. Both bills are expected to be signed into law by the governor, and will take effect immediately.

Kentucky is the last holdout in the South without an anti-union right-to-work law on the books. For decades, labor unions and Democrats fended off such measures, which diminish union membership and weaken the labor movement. But when Republicans captured the state House in November, they paved the way for passage of the legislation. The law will apply to all new labor contracts, but will not affect current agreements.

Unions and Democrats mounted a last-ditch effort to stop the legislation this week, holding protests at the state capitol building in Frankfort saying the bills would drive down wages. But Republicans now have overwhelming control of both the state Senate and the House. Kentucky’s governor, Matt Bevin, is a Republican who won office in 2015.

“They’re cutting workers’ pay,” Bill Finn, state director of the Kentucky State Building and Construction Trades Council, told The Huffington Post this week. “People voted for a change in this election, but they didn’t vote for this. They didn’t vote for pay cuts.”

Right-to-work laws forbid contracts that require all workers in a particular bargaining unit to pay fees to a union. Under U.S. labor law, a union must represent all employees in a unionized workplace, even those who may not want representation. Unions argue it’s only fair that all workers share the costs of bargaining and maintaining the union contract.

By allowing individual workers to opt out of paying union fees while benefiting from representation ― an arrangement unions call “free riding” ― right-to-work laws can drive down membership and weaken unions financially and politically. The conservatives who push right-to-work laws argue that they assure workers’ individual freedoms by not compelling anyone to support a union.

Labor leaders were equally troubled by the legislature’s move to gut the state’s prevailing wage law. Such laws require that employers pay certain minimum wages on work funded by public money. Backers of the laws say they help make sure companies accepting taxpayer dollars don’t drive down wages and working conditions. Opponents argue they inflate the cost of public works projects.

The repeal means prevailing wages will no longer apply to construction workers building schools and government buildings.

Charlie Essex, the financial secretary for Local 369 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Louisville, called the measure “an attack on union people.” He estimated that the prevailing wage law applied to more than 30 percent of union construction work in Kentucky.

Backed by business lobbies, Republican lawmakers around the country have been aggressive in pushing right-to-work bills and prevailing wage repeals in recent years. When Democrats lose control of a statehouse chamber or the governor’s mansion, they are often powerless to stop them.

Long confined to the South and West, right-to-work proponents have recently made inroads elsewhere in the country, including even the industrial Midwest. Since 2012, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and West Virginia have all gone right-to-work. Kentucky will be the 27th such state, making it more the norm than the exception around the country.

Kentucky Republicans Poised To Pass Right-To-Work Law, Delivering Blow To Unions

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By Travis Waldron and Dave Jaimeson
01/04/2017 03:58 pm ET

Kentucky Republicans opened 2017 by introducing a slate of anti-union bills in both chambers of the state legislature, including legislation that would make the state the last in the South to adopt a so-called “right-to-work” law.

Targeting unions has been a priority for the Kentucky GOP in past years, though Democratic control of the governor’s seat and state House kept right-to-work and other legislation from passing. But Gov. Matt Bevin (R) won election in 2015, and Republicans swept their way to their first majority in the state House in nearly a century in November, paving the way for an ambitious agenda with right-to-work at the top of the list.

The proposed right-to-work bills, the first of which a state House committee approved Wednesday after a brief hearing, would end requirements that employees pay fees to a union. These bills would gut Kentucky’s unions politically and hurt their workers, local labor officials said.

“First of all, when you pass right-to-work you’re racing to the bottom in terms of wages,” said Larry Clark, a retired union electrician and Louisville Democrat who served as speaker pro tempore in the Kentucky House before he stepped down in 2014. “Statistics show that there’s less per capita family income. Statistics show there’s less tax revenue because there’s less money spent.”

Under U.S. labor law, a union must represent all the employees in a workplace it has unionized, even those who may not want representation. Unions say it’s only fair that all the workers in the bargaining unit pay fees to the union to cover the costs of bargaining.

But right-to-work laws make such arrangements illegal, allowing workers to opt out of paying fees to a union that will nevertheless represent them ― a situation that unions derisively call “free riding.” Backers of right-to-work laws argue that no worker should be required to support a union, even if it bargains on his behalf.

By helping to erode union membership, right-to-work laws hurt unions financially and weaken them (and, by extension, Democrats) politically. Right-to-work laws used to be a hallmark of conservative states in the South and West, but they have spread rapidly in recent years, even in the industrial Midwest. Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and West Virginia have all gone right-to-work since 2012. West Virginia was the 26th state to pass such a law, marking a symbolic turning point for right-to-work proponents.

F. Vincent Vernuccio, the labor policy director at the Mackinac Center, a conservative think tank that supports right-to-work efforts, said he expects Kentucky Republicans to move quickly after their success in the November elections. Vernuccio said Missouri and New Hampshire could follow Kentucky this year.

“We may see up to 29 [states] before the spring,” Vernuccio said. “You’re definitely seeing a snowball effect, and more and more states are looking to give workers freedom.”

Kentucky, home to organized industrial plants for Ford and General Electric, among other companies, had held back the tide prior to last year’s elections. The state had nearly 200,000 union members in 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Counter to national trends, its share of workers represented by unions has risen in recent years. And ahead of a Wednesday committee hearing, critics of the legislation pointed to data which they said showed that Kentucky’s manufacturing sector had outperformed neighboring Indiana’s since Indiana approved a right-to-work law in 2012.

But now, union officials in Kentucky say the package of legislation introduced Tuesday amounts to an even stronger attack on unions than laws passed in other states.

The House right-to-work legislation, for instance, would prohibit public sector workers from striking, while similar legislation in the Senate would prevent private sector unions from devoting union dues to political causes like political action committees.

A separate bill in the House, meanwhile, would repeal Kentucky’s prevailing wage law that applies to state construction contracts. That bill also passed a House committee Wednesday afternoon.

“It’s devastating,” said Charlie Essex, the business manager and financial secretary for Local 369 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, based in Louisville. “It’s a blatant attack on union people.”

While right-to-work has been a contentious issue across states, leaders from Kentucky’s construction unions are just as concerned about the repeal of the prevailing wage laws, which apply to between 30 and 40 percent of union construction work in the state, Essex said.

Such laws require that companies bidding on public works projects pay certain minimum wages to the workers employed on the resulting jobs. Unions say the laws are crucial to prevent bidders from driving down wages in the local economy.

Republicans have in the past argued that prevailing wage laws lead to unnecessary cost increases under state contracts, a point that union leaders have disputed. In 2001, the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission examined a period when the state’s prevailing wage law did not apply in certain circumstances and “concluded that prevailing wage has no statistically significant effect on construction cost,” with some caveats.

Clark said that repealing the prevailing wage provisions ― which some studies have shown lead to higher-than-median wages for the Kentucky workers subject to them ― will have a detrimental effect on apprenticeship and job training programs that businesses and unions rely on. The combination of changes, labor leaders said, would also hurt workers’ wages.

“They’re cutting workers’ pay through right-to-work and prevailing wage in Kentucky. That’s what we’re doing,” said Bill Finn, state director of the Kentucky State Building and Construction Trades Council. “People voted for a change in this election, but they didn’t vote for this. They didn’t vote for pay cuts.”

More than 100 union members and activists gathered near the state Capitol on Wednesday, with plans to testify against the legislation in a last-ditch effort to stop it.

Get Out To Vote

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Union members who don’t vote elect anti-union officials. Thanks to our many members who continue to show the importance of voting in the upcoming election!

Indiana Interim Study Committee Reviews Payroll Fraud Issue

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Yesterday the Indiana Interim Study Committee on Employment and Labor heard testimony from construction contractors on the issue of#payrollfraud. Contractors asked the Indiana Legislature to consider options to investigate and prosecute businesses who break the law and steal from taxpayers. Stay tuned for actions the legislature takes to stop cheating businesses from robbing taxpayers of $400 million/year and raising costs on law-abiding business.

2015 Omnibus Bill Includes Delay on ‘Cadillac Tax’ So Families with Healthcare in US are Protected for Now

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Members of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC) and participants in other employer sponsored health care plans in the U.S. can rest a little easier now that implementation of the “Cadillac tax” on those benefits has been delayed until 2020. This provision was included in the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill that was signed into law by President Obama. The House of Representatives passed the bill on a 316-113 vote, while the U.S. Senate passed it 65-33.

It is hoped that this delay in implementing the Cadillac tax, which would impose a 40% excise tax on the portion of group health plan premiums that exceed $10,200 for single coverage and $27,500 for family coverage, will lead to a full repeal down the road.

“When people take a closer look at the so-called Cadillac tax, they see how unfair it is for employers and employees,” said UBC General President Douglas J. McCarron. “We have been working hard with law makers and this two-year delay helps us on our way to a full repeal.”

Read this article here.