The View from Hillsboro - Advocating for Public Schools

Contractors and living wages

A couple of school board meetings ago, one of the routine items voted by the board was a couple of relatively small contracts for some fire alarm upgrades. One thing I noticed was the very large spread in the amounts of the bids: In one case the lowest bid was less than one third of the highest bid, in the other it was less than half.

When I was a member of the board of directors of my university (a long time ago, in a far away land...) we were legally required to assign contracts to the lowest bidder, but we also had to exclude those that offered a bid that was too low. The idea is that if someone offers you a deal that looks too good to be true, it probably is. We did not want to be penny wise and pound foolish and have to pay more at a later time because of poor workmanship and lack of quality.

In a case like the one of the HSD fire alarm upgrades (and other "small" contracts) I would really like to know if the contractors bidding are paying their workers well enough to attract qualified people. Let's ask what they expect to pay the people working on the project that we are going to pay for. Are the workers going to get a living wage? Or will their children qualify for reduced cost lunches if they attend Hillsboro schools?

I think that we need to pay more attention to the people who work on our contracts, and make sure that they are treated fairly. It is the right thing to do, and in the long run it makes more financial sense.

posted by Unknown @ 5:45 AM