This emergency rule immediately amends an existing rule relating to wage orders by adding a cutoff date by which local wage rates must be submitted to the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations for them to be used by the Department in its annual determinations of prevailing wage rates of construction industry occupational classifications in each Missouri county and the City of St. Louis.

This amendment provides a cutoff date by which local wage rates must be submitted to the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations to determine the prevailing wages of occupational classifications in the construction industry for each Missouri county and the City of St. Louis. Under section 290.262, RSMo, the department must file its initial prevailing wage determinations with the Missouri Secretary of State by March 10 of each year. The department receives thousands of submissions identifying wage rates paid for millions of hours worked in the various occupational classifications throughout the state each year. (For use in preparing the 2015 wage order, the department received reports of wage rates paid for over nineteen (19) million hours of construction work.) In order for it to reasonably be able to consider the impact of the hours submitted, especially considering that the wage rates determined to be prevailing in a county can be dependent on rates paid in an adjacent county under section 290.262.3, RSMo, the department needs to set a cutoff date by which the submissions must be made so that it can then complete the task of sorting and tabulating the hours submitted and then assess what wage rates prevail as defined by statute. This amendment sets such a cutoff date.