On June 24, a U.S. District Judge blocked portions of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) new rule updating the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts Regulations (DBRA). The DBRA covers all federally funded public works projects valued at more than $2,000, and it requires contractors and sub-contractors on these projects to pay laborers and mechanics the prevailing wage and benefits of similar projects in the same geographic area. The new rule, issued in August 2023, applies the wage requirements to all contracts on qualifying projects, even when the requirements have been wrongly omitted from the contracts. Further, the rule contains a provision stating that certain truck drivers and material supply employees of firms that also employ construction workers at the construction site were bound by the regulations.
However, the court decided that portions of the rule go beyond the scope of the DBRA by mandating that prevailing wage requirements be read into every federally funded contract; and applying the rule to workers that the DBRA does not cover. The court further held that these provisions impermissibly conflict with basic contract and due process requirements and with the DBRA itself. The provision automatically applying prevailing wage standards to all qualifying contracts does not give contractors sufficient notice of the applicability of DBRA requirements. Further, because the DBRA refers only to “mechanics and laborers employed directly on the site of the work,” he held that the plain language is unambiguous and excludes truckers and employees who do not work directly on site. Under this decision, the DBRA only applies based on the function a worker performs. Therefore, federal contractors and subcontractors are only bound by prevailing wage requirements for workers who perform the duties of a laborer or mechanic on a covered construction site.
