Rural construction projects key to prevailing wage study

Michael Tanchek really, really wants to hear from contractors who handle non-residential jobs in rural areas of Nevada.

Tanchek, the state's labor commissioner, has undertaken the annual task of collecting the data that will be used to determine prevailing wage rates.

Those are the wages required on all public works jobs schools, roads, government buildings and the like costing more than $100,000 in Nevada.

The prevailing-wage rates are established on the basis of a survey of contractors, and they're established on a county-by-county basis for dozens of individual crafts.

The challenge, Tanchek said a few days ago, is getting data from lightly populated rural areas where contractors and non-residential construction jobs both are rare.

If the labor commissioner doesn't receive data from contractors in a rural area, the prevailing-wage rate is established on the basis of a neighboring county.

And that, Tanchek said, sometimes can lead to a requirement that builders pay metropolitan wages on public works projects in rural areas.

"We're always looking for ways we can increase the participation in the survey, particularly out in the rural areas," he said.

In future years, he said the state hopes to allow contractors to complete the survey on-line a step that would speed compilation of the results as well as providing convenience to participating companies.

But this year, the labor commissioner's office continues to do it the old-fashioned way, mailing about 14,000 copies of the survey form to contractors around Nevada.

But the vast majority of those contractors handle residential work and don't participate in the prevailing-wage survey, which deals only with non-residential construction.

"There's no incentive for them to participate because they don't have a dog in that fight," Tanchek said.

The labor commissioner expects to receive between 600 and 700 usable surveys that will provide the basis for the new prevailing-wage rates. (Companies that didn't receive a copy can go to www.laborcommissioner.com to download a survey to be mailed in.)

After the July 16 deadline for receipt of the contractors survey, the labor commissioner's staff will spend six weeks tabulating the results and developing county-by-county, craft-by-craft figures. That amounts to about 2,500 individual rates.

Tanchek said he hopes to post the new rates in late September before they go into effect Oct. 1. Contractors can appeal the posted rates through October.

Carrie Foley, Tanchek's chief assistant, said participating contractors should include wages paid on all construction jobs not just public works projects. And she said the size of the job isn't important, but the specific crafts and the specific location of the work are important elements.