This page was last updated on April 21, 2011.
Discriminatory law is still in effect; Lonzie Cox, Jr.; Beaver County Times; April 21, 2011. I am not related to Mr. Cox.
Most of Mr. Cox’s at least 65 letters since 2004 are tinged with race, and all take leftist positions. This letter is not an exception. The most recent previous Cox letter I critiqued was “Don’t give Reagan so much credit.”
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“The recent passing of labor activist Nate Smith reminded me of an appearance he once made on a Pittsburgh TV program about blacks being barred from the construction industry.
“Smith was being recognized as a national leader in the labor and civil rights movements. On that program, Smith appeared with another important leader in the fields of equality and civil rights, Msgr. Charles Owen Rice (the labor priest), who had been active with Dr. Martin Luther King and a strong opponent of the mindless Vietnam War.
“The monsignor and Smith agreed on the fact that the construction industry in the Pittsburgh region was wrong in barring blacks from construction jobs, even in the midst of a building boom that included the Civic Arena.
“I later discovered that it wasn’t only the management and trade unions that discriminated against black workers, but also a federal law called the Davis Bacon Act of 1931.
“Designed specifically to eliminate blacks from the construction industry during the Great Depression, Davis Bacon has been called the last of the Jim Crow laws and is still in place today. Look at any construction project and you’ll see the spirit of it in action.”
[RWC] You’ll notice Mr. Cox didn’t tell us what the Davis-Bacon Act (DBA) does. DBA forces all contractors on federal construction projects to pay at least the “prevailing wage” in the area of the project. “Prevailing wage” is a euphemism for wages set by labor union management. The idea is to make it more difficult for non-union businesses to under bid union businesses for federal government construction projects. Many state and local governments also have prevailing wage laws. Some of these go one step further and are known as project labor agreements (PLA). PLAs add to the prevailing wage requirement other requirements intended to discriminate against non-union businesses. The DBA and PLAs don’t apply to private-sector projects. Given previous letters indicate Mr. Cox appears to be a lefty first and worries about racism second (here and here), I would be surprised if he would actually support the elimination of PLAs and prevailing wage laws if he had the opportunity.
Mr. Cox wrote, “Look at any construction project and you’ll see the spirit of it in action.” The implication is if you see few blacks on “any construction project” it’s a sign of discrimination. This is the same position Mr. Cox took about “jury participation” in two letters (here and here) during December 2009. As I noted in one of those critiques, blacks are only about 6.3% of Beaver County’s population so - on average - blacks will be only about one in 16 employees.
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