Word: repeals
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Question Two on the ballot is a binding statewide referendum that proposes to repeal Massachusetts' Prevailing Wage Law. The Prevailing Wage Law requires state and local governments to pay the going rates--usually based on union levels--for any construction and public works projects...
More significantly, the repeal advocates have created a political atmosphere of "us versus them." The lines they have tried to draw have been stark: the poor, unarmed taxpayer doing battle with the evil giant, Labor, and his oppressive and omnipotent ally, state government. In short, the repeal movement has tried to paint a portrait of labor as out of the mainstream--they have tried to make the ludicrous case that the interests of organized labor in this state should no longer be part of the general concerns of the community...
...effort to repeal the prevailing wage is simply another attempt to rend the fabric of this social contract; its proponents are not only anti-labor, but anti-community. Organized labor is a valuable and productive component of American society. The prevailing wage is as important to the labor movement as child labor laws, Right-to-Know laws, and the minimum wage...
...vote for the repeal is to express a belief that the government should not provide a safeguard for large numbers of productive citizens--in this case labor--against the selfish interests of the few--the contractors...
...endorse the repeal on the belief that local taxes might be marginally decreased is to accept a definition of community as being limited to a group of individuals gathered together with common borders, and nothing more. It is an abandonment of the idea that members of a community must grow together, work together, and protect each other...