Raise wages, boost economy: Letters (CA)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Letters to the Editor
September 6, 2017 at 12:01 am

Re: “State’s not-so-affordable housing plans” [Opinion, Aug. 31]: Your editorial advocates cutting the pay of construction workers to pad the profits of housing developers. Finally, we have an honest summation of the argument of the housing industry against the prevailing wage: profits before people.

The editorial, however, lacked credibility as well as heart. In outlandish fashion, it cited the recent bought-and-paid-for study funded by the California Homebuilding Foundation to say that the prevailing wage would result in a 37 percent increase in housing costs. The organization, of course, is made up of some of the biggest contractors and real estate developers in the state. And just as your editorial acknowledged, when it comes to maximizing profits, they’d rather pay their poverty wage than a prevailing wage.

In that process, distorting the truth and the facts is no big deal, and the predicted 37 percent housing cost increase that you quoted in your editorial has no basis in reality. In fact, it is up to six times higher than some numbers that the study’s same authors put out in some of their own previous reports.

More credible research puts the added cost of construction related to the prevailing wage at around 3 percent. The increase is then easily made up by savings associated with the skilled-and-trained prevailing wage work forc

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Builders, construction workers settle fight over California wage theft bill (CA)

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BY ALEXEI KOSEFF
SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 9:52 AM

A contentious proposal that would put California builders on the hook for wage theft violations by their subcontractors has advanced to Gov. Jerry Brown after a last-minute agreement between the author and opponents.

The Assembly on Wednesday sent to the governor’s desk Assembly Bill 1701, which would allow construction workers who have not been paid for a job to seek their back wages and benefits, with interest, from the general contractor, even if they did not work directly for that company on the project.

Both the building industry and construction trade unions lobbied heavily on the measure, by Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, in the final weeks of session, plastering websites with digital advertisements, passing out fliers on the sidewalk outside the Capitol and setting up an electronic billboard across the street.

Unions argued that AB 1701 gives workers a legal remedy when subcontractors skip town or file for bankruptcy before paying employees, while the building industry warned that it could drive up the cost of construction and worsen California’s housing crisis by potentially forcing them to pay twice for labor.

Yet the measure received overwhelming support Wednesday when it came up for a vote in the Assembly, passing 52-13. Just before that, Thurmond said, he submitted a letter to the Legislature stating his intent to carry a follow-up bill. It will remove a section of AB 1701 that builders worried could be used to hold them liable for further monetary damages.

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It’s accountability time in the construction industry (CA)

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Tony Thurmond’s Assembly Bill 1701 is a simple but powerful piece of legislation that will bring accountability to the private construction industry

By Robbie Hunter
This article was published on 08.17.17.

When it comes to protecting construction workers in the underground economy,the history of California has found that the buck stops . . . nowhere.

Most of the cheating, most of the rip-offs, most of the theft of workers’ wages takes place two or three rungs down from the general contractors at the top of the construction pyramid. There’s so much of it that the overwhelmed state Department of Industrial Relations can’t keep up on the enforcement end. The outcome: tens of thousands of construction and other blue-collar workers are denied hundreds of millions of dollars a year in lost wages, while the state is shorted somewhere between $8.5 billion and $28 billion a year by employers who don’t pay their taxes.

It’s a situation studied to death by academicians while lawmakers have hesitated to throw up the stop sign.

Finally, somebody in Sacramento is doing something about it. Assemblyman Tony Thurmond has taken the lead, and if his colleagues in the Legislature follow it, we might soon have a mechanism to crack down on the cheating.

Thurmond, a Democrat from Richmond, is the author of Assembly Bill 1701, a simple but powerful piece of legislation that will bring accountability to the private construction industry. The bill maintains that if you are the general contractor on a construction project, and if your sub-contractors-or even their “sub-subs”-stiff a worker out of his or her pay, you are liable. End of story.

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Newly available wage theft data shows nearly 130 Colorado employers with violation (CO)

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Adrian D. Garcia
August 24, 2017

The state of Colorado is starting to name companies that steal wages from their employees, ending decades of businesses being able to shield their identities under claims of trade secret protections.

Nearly 130 employers have been ordered to pay employees $547,780.90 in back pay and penalties since April 13. The companies were also ordered to pay the state another $170,750 in fines in connection with wage-law violations, according to the data shared Monday by the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

The new transparency around wage theft violations comes after a Rocky Mountain PBS investigation into Colorado’s wage-theft secrecy in 2015 highlighting how “you can’t know if your favorite bar stiffs its servers” or “if your future employer cheats its workers” because a state law from 1915 allowed companies to keep their wage law violations from the public by claiming the information contained “trade secrets.”

In 2016, state Rep. Jessie Danielson of Wheat Ridge and former state Sen. Jessie Ulibarri of Commerce City, both Democrats, attempted to change the law. They were unsuccessful.
This spring, Danielson tried again. She partnered with state Sen. John Cooke, a Greeley Republican, and ultimately got through the Wage Theft Transparency Act.

The act, signed into law by Gov. John Hickenlooper in April, clarifies that wage law violations are not confidential and should be released to the public. The state still has the ability to withhold some information like an employer’s exact vacation policy if the company can successfully show why the info is a trade secret and shouldn’t be released to the public.

“These companies, in theory, without this new law could continually commit wage theft and continually cheat and steal from their employees,” Danielson said. “This is is the kind of legislation that will protect workers all across the state.”

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Prevailing wage: Good for workers, good for business (CT)

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AUGUST 28, 2017
KIMBERLY GLASSMAN

Gov. Malloy and the legislature are considering deep cuts to municipal aid in order to rectify an over $3 billion budget deficit. Connecticut’s Conference of Municipalities (CCM) is rightfully concerned, and looking for other means to keep municipal budgets balanced. One of its main proposals is to raise the thresholds as to when our state’s prevailing wage law is triggered on public construction projects.

Connecticut’s current prevailing wage thresholds are $400,000 for new construction and $100,000 for renovations. If a project falls below that threshold, then workers only have to be paid the minimum wage. When CCM proposes an increase to the thresholds, they’re proposing that more construction workers be paid the minimum wage rather than the family sustaining prevailing wage.

The truth is CCM’s proposal will make Connecticut less competitive. Our neighboring states, Massachusetts and New York, have a zero threshold on prevailing wage, meaning that the wage protection is triggered on dollar one on public works projects. Rhode Island’s prevailing wage threshold is $1,000, which is less than the federal threshold of $2,000. And New Jersey’s threshold is $15,444. We don’t want to lose skilled workers to our surrounding states.

Opponents to prevailing wage perpetuate a misconception that the wage protection somehow only benefits union workers or union companies. But that is not true. Non-union contractors also perform work on publicly funded projects. And all construction workers, regardless of union affiliation, benefit from the prevailing wage law. Prevailing wage rates are based on surveys conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor of what local contractors actually pay workers on public works projects in the state.

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Prevailing wage is good for workers (DE)

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Letters to the Editor
Published 9:00 a.m. ET Sept. 12, 2017
Updated 10:26 a.m. ET Sept. 12, 2017

There he goes again. In the Monday News Journal story “Prevailing wage law ignites Republican suspicion,” Sen. Greg Lavelle continues to offer alternative facts about the state’s prevailing wage law.

The truth is prevailing wage is determined by wage surveys of construction work done in Delaware, reflecting a market rate for construction workers. It includes a worker’s total compensation – take home pay, cash value of health care benefits, and retirement benefits.

The prevailing wage applies to union and non-union construction workers and it levels the playing field for Delaware workers by protecting their wages from unscrupulous contractors and out of state workers.

Plus, multiple studies and analyses of other states, like Wisconsin and Indiana, that have eliminated prevailing wage have shown that the savings promised through the deceitful and anti-worker rhetoric never materialized.

Mike Hackendorn
Vice President, Delaware Building Trades Council

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LCA contractors fined $2.9M over Detroit hires (MI)

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Louis Aguilar, The Detroit News
Published 11:38 p.m. ET Aug. 23, 2017
Updated 8:29 a.m. ET Aug. 24, 2017

Dozens of the contractors building Little Caesars Arena have been fined a total of $2.9 million as of March for frequently not hiring at least 51 percent of Detroiters at the ongoing construction site, according to the latest data collected by the city.

And that total is expected to be even higher during the push to complete construction of the $862.9 million sports and entertainment complex by early September, based on the monthly data compiled by the city agency monitoring the workforce agreements on construction sites, said Portia Roberson, director of the city’s Office of Human Rights.

An average of 27 percent of total hours worked at the arena site were performed by Detroit residents from April 2015 to March 2017, the latest monthly data available. It’s been two years, August 2015, since at least 51 percent of hours worked at the site was done by Detroit residents, data shows. The percentage of hours worked is the measure the city uses to determine how many residents the individual contractors have working at the site.

In March alone, the city cited 53 of the contractors with fines ranging from $137,613 to a unit of Motor City Electric to 26 cents to John Papalas & Co. Motor City Electric is a large electrical contractor and the Papalas firm specializes in industrial painting and sheeting services. The other 32 contracting units on site were not fined, according to city records. Several large contractors, it should be noted, have multiple units working at the site.

Currently, crews are working three shifts each week day and Saturdays, with more than 1,100 workers on the site on weekdays, said a spokesman for Olympia Development of Michigan, the firm overseeing the construction.

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Massachusetts contractor to pay $100,000 for alleged wage law violations (MA)

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by Mark Iandolo |
Aug. 16, 2017, 8:47am

BOSTON (Legal Newsline) – Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced Aug. 8 that Wilmington Wiring Corporation (WWC) and owner John Garrett will pay more than $100,000 after allegations of intentionally failing to properly pay employees working on a public project for the city of Worcester to repair streetlights.
Healey’s office cited the defendants with failure to pay the prevailing wage, failure to furnish payroll records, and failure to furnish certified payroll records to the Attorney General’s Office.

According to Healy, the defendants failed to pay six employees the right wages on the public works project. Massachusetts has a prevailing wage law mandating that contractors and subcontractors working on public construction projects need to pay employees a special minimum wage based on occupational classification.

“Prevailing wage laws ensure workers are paid a real, living wage and level the playing field for companies that play by the rules,” Healey said. “Workers, honest employers and taxpayers lose when companies fail to follow wage and hour laws.”

Assistant attorney general Erik Bennett and investigator Tom Lam, both of Healey’s Fair Labor Division, handled the case for Massachusetts.

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Marino Introduces New Jobs Law (NY)

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By Jim Rondenelli August 15, 2017 12:17 PM

Joined by local union leaders and workers at City Hall, Utica Councilman Joe Marino introduced legislation he says will bring good paying jobs to Utica and skilled craftsmanship to City projects.

Marino says the new law would require contractors that win a bid in the City of Utica over $250,000 to have an apprenticeship program built into their company.

He says the jobs law would help put families back to work. Marino says under the apprenticeship program, they’ll get to earn while they learn and become skilled labor under the tutelage of skilled craftsmen.

Marino says there are about 750 certified apprenticeship contractors throughout the state.
Representatives from LIUNA Local 35, Plumber And Pipefitter Local 112 and IBEW Local 43 attended today’s announcement.

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Fair Wage? What repeal of the prevailing wage could mean for the construction trades (WI)

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TABLE OF EXPERTS
Aug 29, 2017

The Wisconsin Legislature is considering a full repeal of the prevailing wage statute, which sets construction wages for public projects. Proponents say it will save taxpayers money, but will it? And what are the potential negative impacts of a repeal? The Milwaukee Business Journal recently assembled a panel of experts representing the building trades to explore the issue.

STEVE BROAS (MODERATOR): THERE HAS BEEN A LOT OF DISCUSSION ABOUT THE PREVAILING WAGE. WHAT EXACTLY IS IT, AND WHY WAS IT STARTED?

DAN BUKIEWICZ: That’s a great way to start this conversation, because you really have to go back to the beginning to understand what prevailing wage is all about. It started during the Great Depression. Communities were seeing a lot of transient workers coming into their communities to do work, and they wanted to protect their own local economy and workers. So, prevailing wage was started first and foremost to protect local workers. It established a rate at what it cost to do business and live in that area.

DALE POWELEIT: It started in New York originally. An Alabama company came up and starting undercutting local contractors on construction projects. The people in the community said that was not fair to the area workers, and they decided to go to the federal government, which passed the Davis Bacon Act in 1931. Wisconsin passed its law three or four years after that and other states followed suit.

JEFF MEHRHOFF: The Wisconsin legislation was modeled after the Davis Bacon Act and sets standard local wages. It is not a statewide standard. It is based on the average of construction wages in that area. Milwaukee’s standard wage is different than Madison and different than Appleton.

MODERATOR: HOW DOES IT IMPACT PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PROJECTS?

BUKIEWICZ: Usually, prevailing wage applies only if tax dollars are attached. In Wisconsin, it includes state projects and projects for the University of Wisconsin system. It does not apply to private projects, but there are responsible contractors who pay prevailing wages on private projects, because they want to do the right thing. But that is strictly their call.

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