Gruenhagen: repairing MN’s aging roads & bridges affordable if we pay workers less

Worried about maintaining a middle class in Minnesota, especially for those workers whose positions might not require a four-year college degree?

Glenn Gruenhagen might not be your guy.

The Hutchinson Leader reports in Glenn Gruenhagen and rival Darrel Mosel see different solutions in House District 18B:

Gruenhagen said he will help repair Minnesota’s aging road and bridges by addressing one factor that makes the work expensive.

“We need to reform Minnesota’s prevailing wage law,” he said. “It artificially inflates the cost.”

Prevailing wage sets the hourly wage employers must pay workers on construction projects that receive state money. Gruenhagen said the mandated pay hurts state projects, and local projects that receive state money.

“Minnesota is among the four states with the highest prevailing wage law,” he said.

To see the prevailing wages for state-funded projects in Gruenhagen's district, check out Region 7 (includes Sibley County) here and Region 8 (includes McLeod County) here.

After he takes out "artificial" prevailing wages, maybe he'll go after worker safety measures and restrictions on child labor, both of which drive up the costs employers face. Perhaps prison chain gangs doing road work, rather than reopening the closed private prison in Appleton, could replace honest construction workers while we're at it. For a bit of porridge and bread crusts--roads would be repaired, prison overcrowding solved.

Photo: Glenn Gruenhagen arguing for his bill to make sure people use the bathroom assigned to their biological gender at birth. Maybe Minnesota construction workers could get second jobs as bathroom monitors if both of Gruenhagen's "reforms" succeed. Photo by Tom Olmscheid via MinnPost.

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