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Wage Theft Is Costing Workers $50 Billion a Year in Stolen Pay

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

THURSDAY, MAY 11, 2017, 3:33 PM
BY ELI HOROWITZ

 

Five local carpenters who were working on a mixed-use building that includes high-end apartments in downtown Worcester are claiming that they were victims of wage theft and payroll fraud.

The carpenters, who were employed by P&B Partitions, a contractor based in West Berlin, New Jersey, say they were victims of wage and hour violations. Three of the carpenters have filed wage complaints with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office, according to a statement from the New England Regional Council of Carpenters.

According to the wage complaints, P&B did not pay the carpenters for all hours worked and frequently paid the workers for overtime hours in cash and at less than the rate required by state law.

Dave Minasian, a spokesman for the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, said the amount of money the workers claim they were bilked of is not being released at this time.

P&B said they did not have anyone immediately available to comment on the complaint. Minasian said P&B has not responded to his organization.

The Worcester Carpenters Union is assisting the workers in recovering the allegedly lost wages.

(Read More)

Construction Fatalities Cost the United States $5 Billion Per Year

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Jill Manzo
May 8, 2017

The construction industry is one of the most dangerous industries in the United States. Construction workers face a wide range of hazards when they arrive on the job site each workday, including large equipment, heavy supplies, height hazards, and long hours. It is important that construction workers are well trained and highly skilled in order to limit on-the-job injuries and fatalities.

Over the past four decades, OSHA and its state partners have worked with labor unions, employers, and safety and health advocates to increase workplace safety. Many employers and contractors put their workers through training and safety programs to ensure workers are prepared for job sites. Safety and health programs encourage a proactive approach to finding and fixing job site hazards before they cause injury or illness. Today, workers are less likely to die on-the-job than they were 40 years ago due to workplace safety efforts.

However, there is still room for improvement. A new report by the Midwest Economic Policy Institute (MEPI) finds that a total of 4,339 construction workers lost their lives at work from 2011 through 2015. This means that an average of 867.8 construction workers suffered a workplace fatality per year, or about 16 construction workers every week across the nation.

(Read More)

(Full PDF Copy of Report Available Here)

Study: Construction workers in southern US lack employment benefits

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Kim Slowey
May 11, 2017

 

Dive Brief:

  • A study has found that construction workers across the southern U.S. receive little to no employment benefits and have relatively low pay, according to the Houston Chronicle.
  • The Workers Defense Project report found that 40% of construction workers in Houston had no health insurance, retirement savings, paid vacations or sick leave. More than 30% were not offered breaks during the day and reported that their employer did not provide drinking water on the job.
  • Only 5% of the 1,435 workers interviewed in six Southern states said workers’ compensation covered the cost of their work injuries, and 57% said they earned less than $15 an hour.

Dive Insight:

The results of this study reinforce a complicated issue plaguing the industry. On one hand, contractors across the country are facing the consequences of skilled-labor shortages and say they’re pulling out all the stops – including raising pay – in an effort to recruit workers. However, this report reveals that, at least in the South, many companies aren’t making the necessary changes in compensation and workplace culture to be an attractive option for new workers.

(Read More)

(Full PDF of Report)

Santa Fe judge allows wage-theft enforcement suit to continue

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By T.S. Last/Journal NorthFriday, April 28th, 2017 at 4:56pm

SANTA FE – District Court Judge David K. Thomson on Friday rejected a motion by the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions to dismiss a lawsuit filed claiming the department was not enforcing state wage theft laws.

The lawsuit was filed in January by four people who say they were victims of wage theft and a coalition of workers’ rights groups. They allege that the department doesn’t hold guilty employers liable for statutory damages during the administrative enforcement phase of a case; improperly imposes a $10,000 cap on investigating wage theft claims; doesn’t investigate or take action against a business when a claim is more than a year old; and refuses claims when workers get snagged by administrative red tape.

“This ruling reaffirms that every hard working New Mexican – not just those with the money to hire lawyers – deserves to be paid for their work,” Elizabeth Wagoner of the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a news release. “Our state government cannot turn a blind eye when employers break laws protecting working people.”

(Read More)

Requiring higher wages would pay off in more home-building: Guest commentary

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Murtaza Baxamusa
POSTED: 04/28/17, 9:50 AM PDT

 

For the second straight year, the California Legislature is considering cutting red tape for developers and builders in an effort to encourage construction of more housing. This approach suggests that the state’s affordable-housing crisis is entirely the result of too many regulations and too much public input inhibiting supply.

Not exactly.

A recent study analyzing industry and economic census data by Smart Cities Prevail (SCP) revealed that it takes 13 percent more workers to produce residential housing today than it did 20 years ago. And while construction profits have increased 50 percent more than the cost of labor or materials, inflation-adjusted wages for blue-collar construction workers have actually decreased by 25 percent.

As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. And by leading a race to the bottom for productivity and wages, the industry has helped create California’s housing crisis.

If we truly want to solve this problem, this dynamic needs to change.

There are more than a million Californians who work in construction. Yet many working Californians simply don’t make enough money to afford a roof over the head of their family.

(Read More)

Roundtable exposes extent of wage theft

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Steve Share
April 27, 2017

One worker after another, they described how employers failed to pay them for work they performed. They included a truck driver, a home health care worker, a retail cleaner and a school worker. All spoke at a roundtable Wednesday hosted by the University of Minnesota Labor Education Service and moderated by Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith.

The event highlighted the problem of wage theft in Minnesota and pointed to legislation to improve enforcement when wage theft occurs.

“It is so completely wrong,” Smith said. “Wage theft is stealing.”

…

In some industries, such as construction, employers intentionally and routinely steal wages from workers, said Burt Johnson, attorney for the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters. It is “a business model” that the union refers to as “payroll fraud.”

Lt. Gov. Smith said her understanding of wage theft has grown in recent years.

“I have to admit I thought it was something that was extremely rare and almost done by accident,” she said. “I have learned a lot since then,” noting “There are so many ways employers can steal from their employees, whether it’s five minutes at a time or two weeks at a time.”

(Read More)

Housing Affordability Prevailing Wage Standards Can Help Improve Housing Affordability

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

STUDY: LINKING PREVAILING WAGE STANDARDS WITH HOUSING REFORMS WOULD CLOSE AFFORDABILITY GAP

Alex Lantsberg, MCP, AICP

A brand new study by Smart Cities Prevail shows that linking prevailing wage standards with proposed reforms to streamline new housing development would close the affordability gap, save state and local governments tens of millions of dollars annually, and disproportionately benefit communities of color.

Overall, the study notes that it takes 13% more workers today to match the residential housing output that California enjoyed just twenty years ago. This steep decline in productivity has been matched by a 25% decline in inflation-adjusted blue-collar construction wages (the median wage is just $35,000 per year) and housing prices that have soared as high as 54% in the Bay Area.

“A productivity renaissance will be necessary to produce housing units in the numbers that will noticeably shave what Californians pay for housing,” said study author Alex Lantsberg. “Studies have repeatedly shown that the best way to realize that goal is by incorporating prevailing wage standards.”

Prevailing wage is a minimum wage for blue-collar construction work that reflects local market rates for different skilled crafts. Long associated with stronger economic outcomes and more local hiring, most research shows that prevailing wages have no significant impact on total project costs because they promote higher skilled craftsmanship. This triggers increases in productivity and efficiency as high as 15%, reduced reliance on taxpayer funded public assistance programs, and prevents workforce shortages by helping to fund the apprenticeship programs that are used to meet California’s construction workforce training needs.

(Read More)

(Full PDF Copy of Study)

Pols working on wage-theft bill (MA)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Katie Lannan, State House News Service
UPDATED: 04/26/2017 09:25:02 AM EDT

BOSTON — Workers’ rights advocates and labor leaders pledged Monday to pass into law this session a bill aimed at preventing wage theft by employers.

During a press conference in support of the bill, its backers said wage theft — a business’s underpayment, non-payment or denial of benefits to a worker — particularly hurts immigrants and can pose a barrier to families trying to move up into the middle class.

“I’m not labeling the entire employer community criminals, because the large majority of them are law-abiding and play by the rules and they deserve protection, but those employers that steal the wages from their workers are criminals,” Massachusetts Building Trades Council President Frank Callahan said. “It’s theft and stealing. They don’t carry guns, they don’t wear masks. They wear suits like this and they steal money from people who wear workboots and go to work every single day.”

The bill (S 999/H 1033) seeks to prevent wage law violations by allowing the issuance of stop-work orders until wage violations are corrected and giving the attorney general’s office the power to bring wage theft cases to court for civil damages.

Attorney General Maura Healey described a growing problem in Massachusetts, saying she has hired new investigators and expanded multilingual outreach efforts to combat wage theft. She said her office last year fielded over 20,000 calls from people reporting stolen wages and received 6,000 complaints.

(Read More)

Wage theft is stealing, hurting vulnerable workers (MN)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

EDITORIALS
APR 27, 2017

Lt. Gov. Tina Smith has been shedding some light recently on wage theft in Minnesota. She has been urging the Legislature to pass legislation cracking down on wage theft this session. She took part in a Capitol rally in February and on Wednesday she joined legislators and Minnesota workers in a roundtable discussion.

According to Smith, wage theft occurs when employers do not pay workers what is owed to them for work performed. According to Smith, more than 39,000 Minnesota workers lose out on nearly $12 million in unpaid wages each year.

“Wage theft is stealing. It’s not how we do business in Minnesota,” Smith said Tuesday.

She says Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposal would strengthen workers’ rights and crack down on non-abiding employers.

It proposes the following:

* Providing funding to enforce wage theft protections
* Defining the law by making it clear wage theft is wrong and illegal
* Give investigators the power to subpoena documents
* Require notice of information to be provided to employees at the start of employment, including rate of pay, the legal name of the employer and the employer’s address and phone number
* Creating stiffer penalties to prevent and crack down on wage theft
* Increasing the fines for willful and repeated violations of wage theft laws from $1,000 to $10,000 per violation
* Requiring employers pay employees every 16 days rather than every 31. Under current law, an employee could work 41 days without knowing whether they are going to be paid or not.

(Read More)

National Poll: Most Voters Support Prevailing Wage on Public Infrastructure Projects

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By SMART CITIES PREVAIL

“While voters may have disagreed on many issues this past November, they agree that prevailing wage laws should be preserved by a wide margin,” said pollster Brian Stryker. “Only 21% of voters want to eliminate prevailing wage laws-even after hearing a commonly referenced argument for doing so. And support for prevailing wage extends to large majorities of Democrats, Republicans, Independents and Trump voters.”

Construction is America’s fourth largest industry, and directly supports more than 6.6 million jobs. About a quarter of annual construction output, or $363 billion, is spent on government owned construction projects-including roads, bridges, schools, transit systems, water projects and municipal buildings.

Prevailing Wages are determined by surveys of existing market wage and benefit rates for skilled craft workers-such as carpenters, plumbers, electricians, ironworkers, cement masons, heavy equipment operators and others-in more than 3,000 communities across America. The Davis Bacon Act requires prevailing wage on most federally funded construction projects while about thirty states have laws requiring prevailing wages on state or locally funded projects.

(Read More)

(See Poll Summary)