Trump Labor Department Shifts Construction Wages on Its Way Out

The U.S. Labor Department has quietly updated policies on construction wage standards, delivering industry groups a lobbying victory and taking a possible swipe at building unions in the president’s final weeks in office.

Posted deep inside a federal government website, the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division last week made a series of technical revisions to wage requirements for contractors on federally-assisted building projects that could effectively reduce the pay of workers.

Despite a coordinated advocacy campaign from home builder and real estate finance groups during Trump’s four years in office, the department never took up the changes, in part ...