unions "prevailing" against taxpayers

Excerpts from a useful article by J.R. Gaylor-- on the cost of labor regulation to taxpayers and efficiency-- in the Indiana Policy Review (hat tip: ABC's Indy affiliate)...

With all this uproar [about property taxes in Indiana], there is almost total silence on the high cost of public buildings that property taxes fund.

The facts are these: 1) Between 1984 and 2006, Indiana property taxes for school debt and capital projects increased over eight percent per year; and 2) Indiana schools cost 40 percent more to build than schools nationally.

So if Indiana taxpayers are not getting their bang for their buck, who is?...

The elephant [in the room] is the “common [prevailing] wage” and the stranglehold that Indiana union bosses in the building trades have over public construction.

...in Indiana you have unskilled workers with no education or training building a public school making more than the highly educated teachers within the building. Do the wage rates below reflect what is commonly paid in your county? I doubt it. Yet, in most counties those are the kind of premium wages promoted by the union bosses as the “common” everyday practice of pay in each county.