Word: repeals
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Although only tenuous evidence can be presented that repealing the prevailing wage would result in lower taxes, repeal advocates have continually stressed this as a major campaign issue. As Mark Erlich of the Committee for Quality of Life said, "the phrase `tax savings' is a code word that people accept on faith. Our feeling is that we need to educate the public on a fairly complicated issue. In an age where simplistic arguments are winning, it is gratifying to have won so much support for this issue...
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...