Appalachian Oilfield Services Agrees to Pay $129,802 in Overtime Back Wages to 29 Workers at Ohio Oil Fracking Sites

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Appalachian Oilfield Services LLC has agreed to pay 25 heavy equipment operators $129,802 in overtime back wages after an investigation by the U.S.

Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division found the company was in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. At eastern Ohio drilling locations, the workers provided cleanup services and hauled away muck ejected from wells in the oil fracking process.

“Companies that underpay their employees also undercut employers who obey the law and pay their workers lawfully required wages,” said George Victory, the Wage and Hour Division’s director in Columbus. “Failing to compensate employees properly for all hours worked is unacceptable. The Wage and Hour Division is committed to ensuring workers receive the pay they have rightfully earned.”

An investigation conducted by the division’s Columbus District Office found that equipment operators were paid a flat daily rate for a 12-hour shift. When they worked in excess of 12 hours, they were paid an hourly rate. No overtime compensation was provided for hours worked in excess of 40 hours, in violation of the FLSA.

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Lowe’s Settles Independent Contractor Misclassification Case

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Buying something at Lowe’s? Need help putting it where it belongs, hooking it up, making it work? “Get it installed by a Lowe’s professional,” Lowe’s advertises.

Over 4000 such “Lowe’s professionals” in California are members of the plaintiff class in an action alleging that Lowe’s misclassified its installers as independent contractors, rather than employees, thus depriving them of a variety of employee benefits, from workers compensation insurance coverage to 401(k) plan participation.

Without admitting liability, Lowe’s recently settled the case after mediation for a sum that could be as much as $6.5 million, depending on how many of the installers actually file claims and what damages they can prove (and assuming the proposed settlement is approved by the court). Plaintiffs’ attorneys fees may be up to 25% of that amount.

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U.S. Increases Scrutiny of Employee-Stock-Ownership Plans

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The federal government is stepping up scrutiny of how U.S. companies are valued for employee-stock-ownership plans, a vital source of retirement savings for millions of workers.

Some owners are selling stakes in their companies to employee-stock-ownership plans at inflated prices, the government says, jeopardizing those savings.

The Labor Department is the plaintiff in 15 lawsuits related to employee-stock-ownership plans, with “virtually all” the cases alleging shoddy estimates of what a company’s shares are worth, said Timothy Hauser, a deputy assistant secretary at the agency’s Employee Benefits Security Administration.

“Valuation is the first, second, third and fourth problem,” Mr. Hauser said. In March, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez told lawmakers that some appraisals “have been deliberately inflated,” comparing them to real-estate-bubble-era home appraisals that “masterfully came in at what you needed.”

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16th Annual NAFC Conference Registration

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The National Alliance for Fair Contracting will be holding its 16th Annual Conference this year in the lakeside city of Chicago, IL, September 17-19, 2014.

The NAFC Conference provides a national forum for those committed to combating noncompliance of state and federal public contracting laws and draws attendance from contractors, labor unions, fair contracting organizations, attorneys and various officials from local, state and federal governments around the nation.

This year’s conference will be hosted at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers. NAFC Chairman Rocco Davis and the rest of NAFC’s Board of Directors are diligently planning content and speakers to ensure this will be our most successful conference to date.

Register Now

Nashville Drywall Firm To Pay State’s Largest Worker Misclassification Fine

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A $300,000 fine for misclassifying construction workers may be having a deterrent effect, according to officials with the Tennessee Department of Labor. The penalty was the largest to-date in a statewide crackdown on labeling full-time employees as contract workers.

TJ Drywall of Nashville was doing $2 million a year in business but only paying five percent of what regulators say they should have been in workers comp and unemployment insurance premiums.

The Labor Department’s Scott Yarbrough says the practice remains rampant in the construction industry.

“It upsets me when somebody who is following the rules – paying their insurance, paying their taxes like they’re supposed to. And they’re trying to compete with people who aren’t withholding any of that or paying for any of the benefits for somebody who is in fact an employee.”

Building Trades Unions Combine Efforts to Pass Responsible Contractor Legislation

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When it comes to public construction projects in Minnesota, the law says that the lowest responsible bidder gets the job. What constitutes a “responsible bidder” wasn’t clearly defined in the law, however.

Too often, unscrupulous contractors skirt the law to win bids on taxpayer-funded projects. During the recent legislative session, the unions of the Minnesota Building & Construction Trades spearheaded an effort to rectify this, culminating in passage of a bill establishing criteria that contractors must meet when they submit bids to state or local governments.

A bi-partisan effort, with authors from both the Democrats and Republicans, the bill passed the House 84-38 and the Senate 59-0 and was signed into law by Governor Mark Dayton.

“The Trades were frustrated that unscrupulous bidders were being awarded public contracts on all sorts of jobs,” said Kyle Makarios, director of Government Affairs for the Regional Council of Carpenters and leader of the lobbying effort. “We put our heads together to come up with a mechanism to fix the problem.

California Truck Drivers Go On Indefinite Strike

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More than 120 truck drivers who haul consumer goods from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to retail warehouses launched an indefinite strike on Monday, according to MSNBC, escalating a tumultuous multi-year union organizing effort among the drivers. The consumer brands whose supplies could be affected by the strikes include Skechers shoes, Ralph Lauren, Walmart, and Home Depot, according to a press release from strike organizers.

The core complaint underlying the union drive is that companies like Total Transportation Services, Inc. (TTSI), Green Fleet Systems, and Pacific 9 Transportation deem their drivers “independent contractors” in order to avoid paying overtime and prevent their workers from enjoying various other labor law protections. The drivers say they are misclassified and should be treated as full employees, and have begun to flood the California Labor Commission with wage theft complaints in order to fight the misclassification and seek the pay that the “independent contractor” label has cost them over the years.

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AISD Adopts Davis-Bacon Prevailing Wage Schedule, Plans to Conduct Living Wage Floor Study

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In a split vote at its June 16 meeting, Austin ISD’s board of trustees adopted the federal Davis-Bacon prevailing wage schedule as the schedule AISD uses to pay construction workers, and the board pledged to conduct an additional study to determine a living wage for workers.
Pipe fitters, laborers and representatives from Austin Interfaith and AISD employees union Education Austin urged the board to adopt Davis-Bacon and stop using what they called an outdated wage rate schedule, while others called Davis-Bacon “flawed” and asked the board to postpone the vote.

Kayvon Sabourian, an attorney with the Austin nonprofit Equal Justice Center, has said the state allows school districts two options-adopting federal wage rates or conducting a wage rates study. The board in January approved a consent agenda item to put its own study in place, and AISD currently uses wage rates based on a study conducted in 2005, he said.

Sabourian told the board he has represented construction workers whose prevailing wage rates have been violated on AISD projects.

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Report: CT Healthcare Construction Most Active in New England

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Hospitals and other healthcare providers are spending more money on major Connecticut construction projects than in any other New England state, according to a study by Revista.
Ongoing and upcoming hospital and medical office building construction projects this year have a total construction value of $1.76 billion, the Maryland-based healthcare construction data provider said.

That’s ahead of Massachusetts’ $1.15 billion worth of ongoing and upcoming projects, as well as Maine’s $337 million and New Hampshire’s $124 million, Revista said.

Leading the way in Connecticut is the $450 million replacement of Stamford Hospital, which broke ground last year. Next up is UConn Health Center’s patient tower and $203 million outpatient pavilion, and John Dempsey Hospital’s $163 million expansion – all in Farmington.

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Seattle Approves $15 Minimum Wage, Setting a New Standard for Big Cities

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SEATTLE – The City Council here went where no big-city lawmakers have gone before on Monday, raising the local minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than double the federal minimum, and pushing Seattle to the forefront of urban efforts to address income inequality.
The unanimous vote of the nine-member Council, after months of discussion by a committee of business and labor leaders convened by Mayor Ed Murray, will give low-wage workers here – in incremental stages, with different tracks for different sizes of business – the highest big-city minimum in the nation.

“Even before the Great Recession a lot of us have started to have doubt and concern about the basic economic promise that underpins economic life in the United States,” said Sally J. Clark, a Council member. “Today Seattle answers that challenge,” she added. “We go into uncharted, unevaluated territory.”

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