City will soon be able to revoke permits at unsafe work sites

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Meghan E. Irons GLOBE STAFF
DECEMBER 16, 2016

City officials will soon have the authority to deny, revoke, or suspend a permit for any contractor with a poor record of ensuring their workers’ safety.

The City Council approved the safety measure this week, sending a strong message to anyone pulling permits after two construction workers died in October when a water line burst under a South End street, flooding the trench and thwarting attempts to save the men.

The employees – Robert Higgins and Kelvin Mattocks – worked for Atlantic Drain Services, a Roslindale company that was found to have a long and troubling history of violations, including citations for workers lacking oxygen underground and for conditions that could lead to cave-ins, federal records show.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who filed the ordinance proposal in November, aimed to hold individuals and companies accountable and sought better protection for workers by giving the city the power to intervene on their behalf.

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Illegal ‘underground’ construction costing NJ taxpayers millions, report finds

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By: Andrew Polk
Posted: Oct 08, 2016 04:26 PM CDT

The state of New Jersey is losing millions of uncollected tax dollars every year because of a robust and growing underground construction economy, according to a new report by researchers at the Stockton University William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy.

The report finds this illegal construction activity illegally undercuts companies that follow the rules, decreases work opportunities for union workers and may be responsible for the state’s declining construction wages compared to other states.

According to John Froonjian, one of the authors of the Stockton report and a senior research associate and manager of the Stockton Polling Institute, what’s happening is very significant and very costly to the state.

“The construction underground economy, it’s probably worth at least $640 million and our ranges go from half a billion to $1.2 billion dollars and it involves 35,000 workers across New Jersey,” he said.

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Podcast: “Right-to-Work” Regulations and Unions

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

The Illinois Update
DECEMBER 5, 2016

Episode 3 of For A Living focuses on “right-to-work” laws. The podcast is available on iTunes and on SoundCloud.

What are so-called “right-to-work” laws? What is the historical background of these laws? What are their policy implications for the working class? Where are current political and legal battles occurring?

Professor Robert Bruno, Professor Emily E. LB Twarog, and I are joined by Dale Pierson, a Chicago-area labor lawyer who has served as General Counsel of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 150 since 2002, to answer these questions.

Thanks for listening!

For A Living is an educational podcast jointly provided by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Mayor Kenney Signs Expansion of Prevailing Wage Legislation (PA)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

For Immediate Release: October 20, 2016
Published By: Office of the Mayor
Contact: Mike Dunn, (215) 686-6210
Mike.Dunn@phila.gov

(Philadelphia, October 20, 2016) – Declaring it a vital step for thousands who struggle to make ends meet, Mayor Kenney today signed into law a measure that expands the City’s Prevailing Wage Ordinance to include service workers at publicly-subsidized institutions.

“People usually associate the word ‘poverty’ with ‘unemployment,'” said the Mayor. “But the fact is, a good number of Philadelphians who are employed still find themselves struggling in poverty. This measure marks an important step towards assuring that low-wage employees receive a family-sustaining wage.”

Signed into law was Bill #160713, passed unanimously by Philadelphia City Council on October 6. It expands the Prevailing Wage Ordinance to include service workers at universities, hospitals, stadiums, the Convention Center and other publicly-subsided institutions. With the Mayor’s signature, the bill takes effect immediately, and will be applied to future contracts and agreements between the City and such institutions.

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Laborers Make Recommendations for Reforming NYC Housing Preservation and Development

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Recommendations Include Reforming HPD’s Procurement and Reporting Requirements To Combat Wage Theft And Worker Exploitation
NEWS PROVIDED BY
Greater New York LECET
Oct 31, 2016, 10:35 ET

NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Before a New York City Council hearing today, the Mason Tenders District Council, Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), called for reforming the procurement and reporting requirements of the Department of Housing Preservation & Development. After years of mismanagement, flawed procurement processes and corruption, Greater New York Laborers-Employers’ Cooperation & Education Trust (GNYLECET), submitted a series of recommendations at today’s Committee on Housing and Buildings hearing on Intro 967, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito’s and Councilmember Helen Rosenthal’s legislation to reform HPD in relation to construction conditions in housing development projects.

“Intro 967 is a great first step towards reforming HPD and leveling the playing field in their procurement process,” said Pat Purcell, Executive Director of Greater New York Laborers-Employers Cooperation and Education Trust. “For too long the same unscrupulous contractors have been receiving a steady stream of work from HPD, while their indiscretions in regards to wage theft and safety violations have been largely overlooked. If amended to include recommendations like the ones we are advocating for at the Council today, Intro 967 has the potential to rectify a long-term problem at one of the City’s most critical agencies and ensure the gold-standard of construction is being upheld when HPD looks to award projects,” Purcell said.

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2017 Labor and Employment Legislative Developments: Illinois, California, New York, Washington D.C., Georgia, Michigan, and Texas

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Labor & Employment Group

We ring in the new year with our annual reporting on certain employment-related legislative developments slated to take effect in 2017 on the federal level and in Illinois, California, New York, Washington, D.C., Georgia, Michigan, and Texas.

Federal law
  • Executive Order 13706: Establishing Paid Sick Leave for Federal Contractors: Effective January 1, 2017, federal contractors entering into or extending covered contracts with the federal government must provide certain employees paid sick leave annually for illness or medical conditions, preventive care, care of a sick family member, or absences relating to domestic violence or related proceedings. For a summary of these obligations and the contracts to which they apply, please see here.
  • Executive Order 13673: Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces “Paycheck Transparency” Provisions: For federal contracts on or after January 1, 2017, that exceed $500,000.00 (and subcontracts that exceed $500,000.00 other than commercially available off-the-shelf items), contractors covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Davis-Bacon Act, or Service Contract Act will be required to provide a wage statement each pay period to all individuals performing work on the contract. The statement must include hours and overtime hours worked in the pay period broken down by week, rate of pay, gross pay, and itemization of additions to or deductions from gross pay. Statements to individuals who are overtime-exempt need not include a record of hours worked so long as the contractor informs the individual in writing of his or her overtime exempt status. Contractors subject to these “paycheck transparency” provisions also will be required to inform independent contractors working on covered contracts of their status as an independent contractor. (Note that the provisions of this Order that required disclosure of labor law violations in the contract bidding process (the so-called “blacklisting” rule), and restricted the use of pre-dispute arbitration agreements for certain claims, were enjoined by a Texas federal court in late October 2016.)

Guest Commentary: Apprenticeships beneficial to economy

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Sun, 10/30/2016 – 7:00am | The News-Gazette
By FRANK MANZO IV

Students of all ages across our country are back to school.

And while there are many disputes about education policy, there is no disputing its fundamental purpose – to prepare Americans for the jobs of tomorrow.
In Illinois, our fastest growing industry is construction. And construction is projected to grow at twice the rate of Illinois’ economy over the next decade, adding thousands of new
middle-class jobs.

Accessing these jobs in the fastest-growing skilled trades typically requires at least three years of apprenticeship training. And new research from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign shows that the average impact of that training – in the form of increased earnings over an entire career – is greater than the effect of associate’s degrees and many bachelor’s degrees.

So what is an “apprenticeship?”

Apprenticeships have been around for nearly a century. They are governed by state and federal standards that ensure proper certification of graduates. Funded almost entirely by private entities such as employers, labor-management groups and unions, they require almost no out of pocket costs for students, and better yet, enable students to “earn while they learn” – collecting a paycheck while learning a skilled trade on the jobsite and in the classroom. Best of all, they ensure that our state has a pool of skilled tradespeople to meet our long-term infrastructure and building needs.

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Judge blocks Obama rule extending overtime pay to 4.2 million U.S. workers

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

POLITICS | Wed Nov 23, 2016 | 8:30am EST
By Daniel Wiessner and Robert Iafolla

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked an Obama administration rule to extend mandatory overtime pay to more than 4 million salaried workers from taking effect, imperiling one of the outgoing president’s signature achievements for boosting wages.

U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, in Sherman, Texas, agreed with 21 states and a coalition of business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that the rule is unlawful and granted their motion for a nationwide injunction.

The rule, issued by the Labor Department, was to take effect Dec. 1 and would have doubled to $47,500 the maximum salary a worker can earn and still be eligible for mandatory overtime pay. The new threshold would have been the first significant change in four decades.

It was expected to touch nearly every sector of the U.S. economy and have the greatest impact on nonprofit groups, retail companies, hotels and restaurants, which have many management workers whose salaries are below the new threshold.

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In this economy, Latinos are most frequent victims of wage theft

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

October 27, 2016, 08:01 am
By Paco Fabián, contributor

Wage theft is epidemic and it hits Latino workers the hardest. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute found that wage theft across America is costing workers $50 billion per year. Compare that to the robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and motor vehicle thefts in the FBI’s uniform crime report, which cost victims an estimated $14 billion over the same period, and you can see that calling wage theft an epidemic is no exaggeration.

Paying workers below the legal minimum wage, not paying for overtime hours worked, forcing workers to work off-the-clock or, for workers on federal contracts, not paying the proper wage rate for their occupation, are just some of the sleights-of -hand that employers engage in to cheat workers. Although all of these maneuvers are illegal, they are rarely punished.

In a survey conducted of three metropolitan areas with high Latino populations, the largest percentage of workers who suffer minimum wage and overtime law violations are Latinos. And amongst foreign-born Latino workers the problem is even worse.

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Justice for Children Exploited by Utah Construction Company

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Nov 30
By Karen Bobela and Joe Doolin

Bobby Johnson and Danny Steed, former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, attended homeschool through the seventh grade, then started working in the construction industry. While other children their age were focused on passing math exams, Bobby and Danny were working full-time jobs in construction, operating equipment to prep and pour concrete on large-scale projects.

For nearly two years, starting when he was 13, Bobby worked for Phaze Concrete Inc. in Arizona, Kansas, Missouri and Wyoming. When Danny was 14, he worked for the company in Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska for approximately nine months.

Working between 12 and 14 hours per day, six days per week and earning roughly $200 every two weeks, Bobby and Danny were paid an effective rate of $1.19 per hour – not even close to the required federal minimum wage of $7.25.

During their employment with Phaze, Bobby and Danny were required to operate forklifts and use various types of saws to cut rebar and concrete.

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