Add your name: Strong prevailing wage laws improve the lives of veterans and military families

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

votevets.org

Many of the veterans who come back from war return to blue-collar construction jobs or open a contracting business that benefit substantially from prevailing wage laws. In 2014, more than 400,000 veterans held such jobs.

Prevailing wage is like minimum wage for skilled construction workers and ensures those veterans can provide a good life for their families. Overturning those laws would drive thousands of Illinois veterans below the poverty line and into a crippling spiral of debt. Our nation’s heroes deserve better than that from our elected officials.

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Final Rule: Overtime

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Defining and Delimiting the Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional, Outside Sales and Computer Employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act

On May 18, 2016, President Obama and Secretary Perez announced the publication of the Department of Labor’s final rule updating the overtime regulations, which will automatically extend overtime pay protections to over 4 million workers within the first year of implementation. This long-awaited update will result in a meaningful boost to many workers’ wallets, and will go a long way toward realizing President Obama’s commitment to ensuring every worker is compensated fairly for their hard work.

In 2014, President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum directing the Department to update the regulations defining which white collar workers are protected by the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime standards. Consistent with the President’s goal of ensuring workers are paid a fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work, the memorandum instructed the Department to look for ways to modernize and simplify the regulations while ensuring that the FLSA’s intended overtime protections are fully implemented.

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City Hall Tells How It Proposes to Enforce Pasadena’s New Minimum Wage (CA)

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City Hall’s monitoring, enforcement plan calls for hiring a compliance officer, new duties for multiple city departments and a $204,000 budget

by EDDIE RIVERA, Community Editor
Wednesday, May 4, 2016 | 4:56 AM

Following Pasadena’s passage in March of a new ordinance which will raise the minimum wage in the city to $15 an hour by 2020, both business owners and people who work in Pasadena were left with two major questions – how will this raise actually be implemented and monitored, and how will the new law be enforced?

City Hall’s Minimum Wage Internal Working Group has a plan. The detailed proposal was made public last Thursday in an informational report.

The Group is recommending that the overall program be administered by a code compliance manager working within the department of Planning and Community Development. The initial outreach of the ordinance to media, residents and businesses, will be managed by the Council’s Economic Development Committee, and the City’s public information officer. Staff training in the legal requirements of the ordinance will be handled by the City Attorney’s office.

Consumer outreach and education will be managed by the consumer action teams of the Recreation and Human Services Department, who will also manage intake and complaints regarding wage enforcement and refer them to the Code Compliance manager. Egregious cases may also be referred to the Prosecutor’s Office, working with the Police Department.

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Colorado House panel votes to crack open records on wage-law violations

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Jeff Roberts, Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition
April 22, 2016

Information on employers who violate wage laws in Colorado shouldn’t be considered confidential “trade secrets,” a panel of state lawmakers decided Wednesday.

Currently, as Rocky Mountain PBS reported last spring, it is illegal for the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment to disclose whether a company has cheated its workers. Under the state’s interpretation of a 100-year-old law, wage-theft complaints against employers must be kept from the public, even after an investigation is over and a citation has been issued.

HB 16-1347, which passed the House Judiciary Committee 11-0, would make citation and assessment information on wage-law violations available for inspection under the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) after an employer has exhausted all appeals.

“Right now, you can’t even get the information that a wage-law violation has happened and why,” said Rep. Jessie Danielson, the Wheat Ridge Democrat who introduced the bill. She said it’s “kind of ridiculous” the public is not permitted to know which employers have been found in violation of state laws governing the payment of wages, overtime and reimbursed expenses.

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Historic Occasion:City Council Passes Wage Theft Ordinance in 11-0 Vote

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By Seth Daniel
April 29, 2016
It was an historic occasion on Monday night when the Chelsea City Council voted unanimously to enact a Wage Theft Ordinance – the first Council in the state to do so.

The City’s wage theft ordinance, brought to the floor by nine councillors earlier this month, would seek to make a statement about the prevalence of wage theft from employees, but in particular from vulnerable immigrant communities in the city. Practically speaking, the ordinance states that no contractor (or any subcontractor) or vendor hired by the City can have a federal or state criminal or civil judgment, administrative citation, final administrative determination, order or debarment resulting from a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act or any other federal or state laws regulating the payment of wages within three year prior to the date of any contract with the City. It also calls for any violation of the above laws during a contract period be reported to the City within five days.

It also includes a provision that allows the License Commission to deny any permit or license if violations of the law have been made within three years of any application. If any violation of the above law occurs during a licensed period, the Commission can also take action on a license for the violations.

Wage theft is defined roughly as not paying minimum wage, not paying overtime, withholding pay and sometimes not paying at all.

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New York State recovers $10.2M in stolen wages, on pace for record year in recouping money owed to workers

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

BY GLENN BLAIN
Thursday, May 5, 2016, 5:48 PM

ALBANY – State officials are on a record pace for recovering stolen wages, recouping $10.2 million for ripped off workers during the first three months of 2016, the Daily News has learned.

The Labor Department and other agencies returned the money to more than 17,000 workers who were not properly compensated by their employers, including 11,318 in the city, according to state figures.

“New York State has zero tolerance for employers who seek to cheat their employees of hard-earned wages,” Gov. Cuomo said.

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AG Healey Assesses More Than $326,000 in Restitution and Penalties Against Construction Companies in First Quarter of 2016

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Part of an Ongoing Effort by the AG’s Office to Address Wage Theft in the Industry

MAURA HEALEY, ATTORNEY GENERAL

For Immediate Release – April 27, 2016

BOSTON – As part of an ongoing effort to address wage theft in the construction industry, Attorney General Maura Healey has issued 29 civil citations against construction companies from January 2016 through March 2016, an increase from the previous two quarters. Restitution for employees of the various employers totaled nearly $260,000 and the companies were fined a total of more than $68,000.

“Wage theft is a real issue in Massachusetts, including in the construction industry where dishonest companies continue to cheat their employees,” AG Healey said. “Our office is working to level the playing field so that workers are paid fairly and contractors who follow the rules are not at a disadvantage.”

Violations in these cases included the failure to pay proper wages, failure to pay overtime, retaliation and failure to furnish records for inspection. For work performed on public construction projects in the state, the violations included the failure to pay the prevailing wage, failure to submit true and accurate certified payroll records, and failure to register and pay apprentices appropriately.

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IRS Hiring Additional Agents, Providing Additional Resources for Misclassification Enforcement

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

by Scott Braddock
Wed, 05/25/2016 – 7:53am

The recent announcement by the IRS Commissioner that the agency is moving forward with hiring hundreds of additional agents has sparked a debate about exactly how those new resources should be utilized. Some leaders in the construction industry have told Construction Citizen that if the government has more people on hand to enforce the law, proper classification of workers should be a priority.

Misclassification is the practice of designating an employee as a “1099 worker” or an independent contractor when that person, by law, should be compensated as an employee.

Unscrupulous employers do it as a way of sidestepping payroll taxes, unemployment taxes, and workers’ compensation insurance. Even though there are many legitimate uses of contract labor, abuse of the classification gives cheating companies an ability to submit lower bids for projects, undercutting ethical contractors who follow the letter of the law.

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Sacramento contractor makes $385,000 settlement over wages

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BY DALE KASLER
MAY 19, 2016 9:29 AM

A Sacramento electrical contractor agreed to pay $385,000 in back pay to settle an investigation into its alleged failure to pay prevailing wages, the federal government announced Thursday.

Harold E. Nutter & Son Inc. will pay 58 workers a total of $385,000 and has agreed to comply with prevailing wages laws on future contracts, the U.S. Department of Labor said.

The department said Nutter failed to pay prevailing wages on seven federally funded construction projects, six in California and one in Washington state. Because the contracts were federally funded, the Davis-Bacon Act required all contractors and subcontractors to pay so-called prevailing wages, a threshold determined by the department on a community-by-community basis.

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Owners of Concord firm charged with wage theft, tax fraud (CA)

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By Nate Gartrell
POSTED: 04/29/2016 12:01:28 PM PDT
MARTINEZ — A Concord construction firm is facing 11 felony charges after a 10-month investigation produced evidence that its owners were withholding wages from employees and failing to pay them workers’ compensation insurance, according to the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office.

Nathan and Sarah Moore, owners of NRM Renovations Inc., were charged with grand theft of labor, workers’ compensation insurance fraud, and a litany of other counts all related to labor code and insurance law violations, a DA news release says.

The company is accused of owing more than $30,000 in back wages to several employees, around $250,000 in workers’ compensation premiums to insurance companies and back taxes for more than $1 million in wages. They’re also charged with an aggravated white-collar crime enhancement, which could add jail time to their sentence if they’re convicted.

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