Prevailing wage costing taxpayers
The Illinois Landscape Contractors Association commends the Daily Herald for addressing prevailing wage in the landscape and tree care industries. If prevailing wage continues on this trend, the taxpayers of Illinois should realize that anyone mowing a lawn, trimming a tree or planting an annual flower on a public construction project is being paid $53 per hour. That is $424 per day, $2120 per week and roughly $85,000 per season. The typical private sector landscape construction wage in Illinois ranges between $18 and $20 per hour. The typical maintenance wage is between $8 and $12 per hour.
Eighteen states have no prevailing wage at all. California has a robust prevailing wage law but had the foresight to set a landscape maintenance wage in line with industry norms ($8 per hour). In Illinois, we have no distinction and pay $53 per hour for the same work.
Landscape work is difficult and dangerous. Landscape laborers deserve a competitive wage but one that is in line with our industry pay scales. The federal government’s Davis-Bacon wages for landscape work in Illinois are much more reasonable and competitive at $10 to $16 per hour. The state of Illinois’ rates are not even close.
It is the taxpayers who are paying those wages. It is up to them to demand change through their elected officials. Beautiful landscapes will suffer as more money is dumped into labor and away from trees, flowers, and shrubs. It is time for lawmakers and the Illinois Department of Labor to establish landscape wages that are fair to the taxpayers who pay them and the industry that sets them in the competitive market.
Scott Grams
Executive director
Illinois Landscape Contractors Association
Oak Brook