Landscapers’ pay a very big issue

Mr. Orum’s letter, published Sunday, Feb. 12, provided more insight into the problem of prevailing wages/landscape work. He nailed it perfectly; that it is and has been the problem for years. Landscape work is not recognized under the Illinois Prevailing Wage Act.

So, taxpayers, municipal and county in particular, are supposed to pay inflated wages for landscape work done when these wages are not paid landscape workers for nongovernmental jobs. Plus, the state Labor Department has always been noncommital on the subject.

I have attended seminars in past years and when I pinned down the speakers from the IDOL about landscape work, the response has always been “it is a gray area.”

Further, many, if not most, municipalities, and probably counties and park districts, find it more economical to outsource landscape work — mowing, as just one example — than do the work in-house with its own personnel. However, paying a ridiculously inflated prevailing wage work — bids based on approximately $54 and hour plus equipment, fuel costs and profit — would make little sense at all. In fact, for most landscape work, the cost would be double or even higher if prevailing wages vs. realistic wages are to be paid.

As a former, now retired, municipal employee, we did a survey years ago regarding landscape work and found the obvious: workers were not paid commensurate wages that construction and truck drivers were paid. As Orum pointed out, many landscape workers belong to unions other than the Equipment Operators, Teamsters or Laborer’s unions; hence landscape wages are not on a par with these other unions.

It is time the state of Illinois awakened; but this will never happen as long as our elected state representatives and senators and governor continue to keep their collective heads buried in the sand.

Ross Wiegert

Elgin