OHSU, contractor fined $37,600 for asbestos violations (OR)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Tracy Loew, Statesman Journal
Published 10:33 a.m. PT Aug. 24, 2017
Updated 10:34 a.m. PT Aug. 24, 2017

State environmental regulators have fined Oregon Health & Science University and a prominent contractor it hired a total of $37,600 for violating asbestos regulations during renovations at OHSU’s Oregon National Primate Research Center.

The renovations took place in July 2016 at OHSUs Colony Annex, at 505 NW 185th Ave. in Beaverton. The violations likely released asbestos fibers into the air and exposed the public, the state Department of Environmental Quality said.

OHSU was fined $10,400 for hiring an unlicensed asbestos abatement contractor. It also was cited for failing to have an accredited inspector survey the facility for asbestos prior to the renovation.

The penalty was reduced because OHSU later hired a licensed asbestos abatement contractor to remove remaining asbestos at the facility, and decontaminated the Farmington Landfill in Aloha, where the asbestos had been taken.

The contractor, Aloha-based In Line Commercial Construction, was fined $27,200 for conducting an asbestos abatement project without being licensed to do so, and for disposing of asbestos-containing waste at the landfill, which was not authorized to accept it.

The company also was cited for failing to have an accredited inspector survey the building for asbestos before the renovation, and for storing asbestos containing waste in uncovered drop boxes at the facility.

In Line Commercial Construction has completed other major renovations for OHSU, including a remodel of the emergency room.

Asbestos fibers are known to cause lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis, DEQ said. There is no safe level of exposure.

Both OHSU and the contractor were negligent, DEQ said.

(Read More)

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Washington Company Cited for Shorting Construction Workers on Project (WA)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

“Integrity vastly underpaid its employees for the work they did,” said Elizabeth Smith, assistant director for L&I’s Fraud Prevention and Labor Standards division. “It’s important that agencies and non-profits understand that using public money on a project means it’s covered under prevailing wage.”

Aug 28, 2017
Occupational Health & Safety

A Washington State Department of Labor & Industries found that six construction workers employed by Integrity Construction LLC were shorted more than $155,000 in wages for work on a Belfair senior center and are owed about $25,000 each for wood framing at the site, the Belfair Hospitality, Unity, and Belonging (HUB) Senior Center. Their employer, Integrity Construction LLC, was on the project from May to August 2015. L&I recently notified the company of the violation.

“Integrity vastly underpaid its employees for the work they did,” said Elizabeth Smith, assistant director for L&I’s Fraud Prevention and Labor Standards division. “By making sure contractors pay their workers fairly, we are creating a level playing field for firms in the construction industry.”

The investigation found the Tacoma company owes $156,692.48 in wages and more than $30,000 in fines and penalties. Integrity did not appeal the violation and is barred from bidding on future public works projects until that money is paid. The Belfair project received $1.86 million from the state’s capital budget, which meant Integrity was required to follow the state’s prevailing wage law. L&I enforces the law.

(Read More)

19th Annual NAFC Conference – Nashville, TN, Sept. 25 – 26, 2017

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

NAFC will be holding its next Annual Conference in 2017 in Music City U.S.A., Nashville, Tennessee. The Conference will be held at the Sheraton Nashville Downtown Hotel, in the heart of the city. NAFC’s National Conference is attended by several hundred participants from across the nation, including representatives from labor organizations, fair contractors, fair contracting compliance organizations as well as researchers, academics, attorneys and officials from federal, state and local governments. A schedule of events and registration forms are available at the below link to NAFC’s Conference page. Stay tuned for further details.

 

SOLD OUT

Governor Bill Walker signed a Responsible Contracting Administrative Order (AK)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on
July 27, 2017
Since taking office, Governor Walker has prioritized strengthening the rights of working Alaskans. At his direction, the Department of Labor and Workforce Development has stepped up enforcement of workplace safety and health laws, wage and hour protections, and efforts to combat worker misclassification. At noon on Thursday, July 27th Governor Walker will sign the Responsible Contracting Administrative Order, which will embed safety, health and labor rights compliance in the State’s contracting processes. Please join Governor Walker, Labor Commissioner Heidi Drygas, and labor and business stakeholders for the signing ceremony and a luncheon to celebrate this momentous progress in ensuring state contracts are awarded to responsible businesses.
 
Responsible Contracting Administrative Order 
  • The Responsible Contracting Administrative Order requires the Department of Administration to work with the Department of Labor and Workforce Development and the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities to develop regulations that ensure state contracts are awarded to businesses that comply with state and federal labor laws, including:
    • Alaska Occupational Safety and Health Administration laws
    • Alaska Wage and Hour Act
    • Alaska Workers’ Compensation Act
    • Fair Labor Standards Act
    • Davis-Bacon and Little Davis-Bacon Acts
    • Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act
    • National Labor Relations Act
    • Employment Security Tax Laws
  • The Department of Administration will also consider regulations to address debarment and suspension of contractors who have serious violations of workplace safety and labor laws
Benefits of the Responsible Contracting Administrative Order
  • State contracting processes will promote safe workplaces and respect workers’ labor rights
  • The State’s financial interests will be further protected by ensuring responsible businesses are used for state contracts
  • Improvements to workplace safety will facilitate long-term reductions in workers’ compensation insurance costs, as research shows labor rights abuses are associated with higher rates of workplace injury

(See Full Copy of Administrative Order)

Bipartisan coalition beats GOP attempt to weaken Davis-Bacon wage protections

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

July 26, 20171:33 PM CDT BY PAI

WASHINGTON)-By a 183-242 vote, the GOP-run U.S. House defeated the latest Republican assault on the Davis-Bacon Act and its legal prevailing wages for construction workers who toil on federally funded projects. Fifty-one Republicans joined all voting Democrats in backing Davis-Bacon. The other 183 Republicans voted to cut workers’ wages.

And in an indication that even Davis-Bacon foes realize their fight is uphill, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Az., tried to weaken Davis-Bacon – by lowering the wage base – rather than kill it altogether. But nobody was fooled.

Gosar’s amendment to weaken Davis-Bacon “would hurt the local economy, devalue workers’ pay, and take a very important tool out of the toolbox for Republicans, Democrats, and Americans,” said Rep. David Norcross, D-N.J., an Electrical Worker and former Building Trades Council president in southern New Jersey. He led the debate against Gosar’s move.

“The prevailing wage is based on surveys of local wages and benefits, not whether there is a union or not,” Norcross added. “It keeps the community vibrant, and it takes into account those things that happened” there. ” So when you hear the term ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” this is a classic example.”

Besides, “This is about cutting wages in your local community.” He asked colleagues “Why would you ever want to go back and say, ‘I want to hurt the people I represent?'”

The 86-year-old Davis-Bacon Act mandates that locally prevailing wages, determined by the Labor Department, go to construction workers – union and non-union – toiling on federally funded projects such as highways, bridges, airports and subway systems.

For years, construction unions have successfully defended Davis-Bacon against assaults by the anti-worker anti-union Associated Builders and Contractors and its congressional Republican allies, even though two House Republicans pushed Davis-Bacon through in 1931. That scenario occurred again on July 14 during debate on the defense bill.

(Read More)

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US House Defends Davis-Bacon Act

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Washington, D.C. (July 14, 2017)

Terry O’Sullivan, General President of LIUNA – the Laborers’ International Union of North America – made the following statement today on the U.S. House of Representatives’ vote to reject the Gosar Amendment to H.R. 2810, the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2018:

The U.S. House of Representatives decisively rejected an attack on the Davis-Bacon Act with 51 Republican members and all Democratic members voting to defeat the Gosar Amendment.

Representative Paul Gosar’s (R-AZ) amendment would have slashed the wages and benefits for Department of Defense construction projects by manipulating the calculation standard applied under the Davis-Bacon Act; adopting a new standard that would amount to massive cuts to paychecks and benefits.

The Davis-Bacon Act has kept public investment from undermining local wage and benefit standards for decades and Congress has consistently demonstrated their support for the act by rejecting attempts to weaken the Davis-Bacon Act.

LIUNA commends the U.S. House for their bi-partisan resolve in rejecting this cowardly attack on the livelihoods of working men and women.

(Visit LIUNA’s website)

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Prevailing wage, project labor agreements protect living standards for construction workers

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By ROBBIE HUNTER
July 6, 2017 at 12:01 am

In an era of political hyperventilation, it might be a good idea for some critics to take a deep breath before they launch into their attacks on the prevailing wage laws and project labor agreements that protect the living standards of construction workers in California and across the nation.

From Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, anti-union writers in recent weeks have incorrectly branded the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act that wrote the prevailing wage into the law on taxpayer-funded construction projects as born of racism and a rip-off of public funds. The same critics also have falsely characterized project labor agreements as costly to taxpayers and unfair to nonunion construction companies.

Now, for the facts.

Two Republican congressmen, Sen. James Davis of Pennsylvania and U.S. Rep. Roger Bacon of New York, sponsored their legislation 86 years ago to establish a minimum wage on taxpayer-funded construction projects, based on local measures of central tendency in any of the covered construction trades.

The idea behind the prevailing wage is to keep unscrupulous operators from low-bidding the legitimate competition to the detriment of the local workforce. The effect has been to allow blue-collar workers – 400,000 of whom are represented by the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California – to maintain their place in the American middle class.

Of the false charges that have been lodged of late about Davis-Bacon, perhaps the most repugnant is the smear that recirculates every so often that the act originated as an outgrowth of racism. The critics troll through the historic record to quote some congressmen in the debate over Davis-Bacon who supported the law based on their own warped view that it was designed to protect higher-paid white workers in the northeast represented by the authors of the law from “cheap colored labor” that would be imported to their districts from the South. The critics fail, however, to report Congressman Bacon’s reply that imported workers came in white skin as well as black.

(Read More)

Linking Public Works to Local Hiring Faces a Trump Challenge

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By PATRICIA COHEN
AUG. 3, 2017

…

Over the last decade, more and more cities, on the coasts and in the heartland, have tried to leverage their buying power to fuel economic development through local hiring provisions on public projects that favor veterans, residents and low-income workers. But these efforts have been bedeviled by political, economic and legal challenges that have divided business, union and political allies.

Now the Trump administration may rescind an Obama-era initiative that allows hiring preferences on transportation and construction projects in states like New York, California, Texas, Virginia and Illinois, a prospect that has alarmed advocates of such programs.

“Why not let cities and states innovate to create the good American jobs that the administration has been clamoring for?” said Madeline Janis, the executive director of Jobs to Move America, a coalition of faith, labor and other groups that want transportation funding to benefit local communities. “I don’t understand why they would want to cancel the program.”

Legal and regulatory hurdles have long frustrated officials trying to create job opportunities that favor local residents. The Supreme Court has ruled it is unconstitutional for employers in one state to discriminate against residents of another. Federal agencies, through Republican and Democratic administrations, have maintained that restrictions like competitive bidding prevent them from contributing a cent to public projects with hiring preferences. And state lawmakers, complaining that employers and workers outside the target city are at a disadvantage, have outlawed such preferences.

Jobs to Move America was one of several groups that spent years working with transportation officials in the Obama administration on a pilot project to test whether local hiring preferences reduced competition or drove up prices. In January, days before President Trump was sworn in, the Transportation Department extended the experiment, taking place in more than a dozen cities, for five years so that research could be completed.

(Read More)

Labor Department delays full Fiduciary Rule for additional 18 months

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

08/10/2017
By Mark Huffman

The Labor Department has served notice that it intends to delay full implementation of the Fiduciary Rule until July 2019.

The government revealed the delay in a brief filed in a court in Minnesota, where it is a defendant in a lawsuit filed by Thrivent Financial. Previously, the Trump Administration had said it would delay key provisions of the Obama Administration rule until January 2018.

The Fiduciary Rule requires financial advisors to always place the client’s interests ahead of their own. While that might sound fairly straightforward, the financial services industry has resisted that.

One argument is that advisors who make no commissions from the investments their clients make would have to charge so much for their advice that only wealthy investors could afford their services. However, some experts say that delaying the rule further will only make it easier for firms to stall their implentation efforts.

“We have consistently opposed any additional delay, which will only serve to increase uncertainty over the rule’s ultimate fate,” Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at Consumer Federation of America, told ConsumerAffairs.

(Read More)

DeLauro Introduces Bill to Stop Wage Theft, Boost Workers’ Financial Security

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

August 7, 2017
Press Release

WASHINGTON, DC (August 7, 2017) – Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03), along with U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Al Franken (D-MN), and Congressman Bobby Scott (VA-03), introduced the Wage Theft Prevention and Wage Recovery Act to crack down on employers who unfairly withhold wages from their employees. This bill would give workers the right to receive full compensation for all of the work they perform, as well as the right to receive regular paystubs and final paychecks in a timely manner. It would also provide workers with improved tools to recover their stolen wages in court and make assistance available to build community partnerships that enhance the enforcement of and improve compliance with wage and hour laws.

“The biggest economic challenge facing our country is that too many people are in jobs that do not pay them enough to live on. Across the country, some workers are putting in long hours and working for an honest day’s pay, only to have their employers cheat them out of their hard-earned wages. Wage theft is inexcusable and unconscionable, and our federal laws should hold employers who violate their employee’s right accountable,” said Congresswoman DeLauro. “The Wage Theft Prevention and Wage Recovery Act is comprehensive legislation that will strengthen current federal law and empower employees to recover their lost wages. Whether it is compensation for a day’s work, or overtime, employees should be paid what they earn. This legislation not only protects workers, but it will help our economy grow.”

In May, the Economic Policy Institute published a new report finding that employers steal more than an estimated $15 billion from workers each year, with workers in low-wage industries at the greatest risk. A National Employment Law Project 2008 survey of 4,387 low-wage workers in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago found that low-wage workers experienced a range of wage and hour violations, with women, immigrants and minorities being disproportionately affected. Common examples of wage theft include forcing workers to work off the clock, refusing to pay the minimum wage, denying overtime pay to workers even after they work more than 40 hours a week, stealing workers’ tips, or knowingly misclassifying workers to avoid paying fair wages.

(Read More)