After passing the Senate this Bill passed the House in it’s final passage 10/19/26 128-75
Please click on the links to check to see how your Senator or Representative voted.
The Bill: SB908 Senator Frank Farry (R)
Title: Protecting Pennsylvanian Workers
What Does it Mean: The bill expands coverage and tightens how rates apply:
- It adds “custom fabrication” to the definition of “public work.” Custom fabrication means off-site fabrication, assembly, or production of nonstandard goods, materials, components, fixtures, or parts made specifically for a public works project. Covered examples include plumbing/pipefitting systems, HVAC, refrigeration, sheet metal/duct systems, boiler systems, electrical systems, welding, mechanical insulation, ornamental iron, rebar assembly, signs, and prefabricated modules or structures that require little more than installation on site. Standard items such as structural steel members or precast concrete are excluded. Workers performing this work are included in the definition of “workman” (material suppliers who do not perform job-site services remain excluded unless the work is custom fabrication).
- Wage rates and specifications: Public-work contract specifications must state the minimum rates for workmen engaged in custom fabrication. Those rates match the prevailing rate for the same craft or classification on the project. Custom-fabrication contractors and subcontractors are subject to the same compliance, reporting, penalty, and enforcement rules as on-site contractors. The Secretary of Labor & Industry determines the applicable rate based on the locality of the public work project (not the fabrication shop’s location).
- No split rates: Workmen must be paid the appropriate craft rate and may not be paid multiple rates on the same project.
- Exclusions added or clarified: The definition of public work excludes (among other existing exceptions) work under certain rehabilitation or manpower training programs, rehabilitation of residential property with fewer than eight units (with a specified exception for residential municipal housing authority property in a city of the first class), and certain school safety and security improvements. Those school projects must be recommended by a school safety and security assessment, funded under specific Public School Code provisions, identified under School Safety and Security Committee criteria, and estimated at no more than $50,000.
The PA $25,000 public-works threshold is unchanged.
FYI- Maryland threshold is $250,000
OH is $250,000
VA is $250,000
DE is $250,000
The Go Big Small Biz Network’s Position: Oppose, Why…. ·
The threshold needs to be increase and there was no compromise to do so.
It widens what counts as covered work underneath it, so custom fabrication for those same small projects would also have to be paid at the project-site prevailing rate—often the rate of a high-cost county even if the shop is in a lower-cost one—and could not be paid split rates. For a small fabricator or a non-union contractor, a job that used to be bid on local market wages becomes a prevailing-wage job with compliance overhead. That raises the cost of public work, shrinks the pool of shops willing to bid, and makes Pennsylvania less competitive with states that either have higher thresholds or do not push prevailing wage into off-site manufacturing.
Expanding the Act under the current threshold will delay or cancel local projects.
Article, Broad & Liberty (Warren Hudak) PA Chamber memo: Oppose SB 908 – Prevailing Wage Act Amendments
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Any Questions?
Email me, tracey@gobigsmallbiz.com
Thanks,
Tracey and Jeff Wakeen
