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General Assembly approves increasing penalties for bad contractors (RI)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

POSTED BY: SANDY MCGEE JUNE 21, 2018

PORTSMOUTH, R.I. – In a major win for consumers, the General Assembly recently passed legislation (2018-H 7443, 2018-S 2607) that distinguishes penalties for licensed contractors, who fail to comply with Contractors’ Registration and License Board (CRLB) orders.

The new legislation imposes penalties for contractors operating without proper licenses or registration.

The legislation was introduced by Rep. Dennis M. Canario (D-Dist. 71, Portsmouth, Little Compton, Tiverton) and Sen. Paul W. Fogarty (D-Dist. 23, Glocester, Burrillville, North Smithfield) at the request of Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin.

“Negligent and bad contractors not only waste consumers’ money, but there are also significant safety concerns that can arise with inferior or substandard contractor work. This bill will protect consumers’ wallets and health while also holding bad contractors responsible for their actions,” said Representative Canario.

“The public must have a real means to defend against fraudulent or shabby contractors. Today we are putting some teeth in the law to ensure that people get the restitution they deserve and to send a clear message to those who would fleece the public that they will be held accountable,” said Senator Fogarty.

“The number one consumer complaint filed with our office is against contractors who do shoddy work, or worse, fail to do the work at all,” said Attorney General Kilmartin. “Until now, our hands – and the hands of the CRLB – were tied because there was no legal avenue to hold these bad contractors accountable once the criminal sentence expired. This act gives our Office and the CRLB much-needed tools to protect homeowners and ensure that all contractors are playing by the rules. This is a great win for consumers.”

The legislation amends RIGL Section 5-65-19 (“penalty for operating without a registration – failure to comply with a final order of the board – repeat offense a felony”) to provide that any person who violates a final order of the CRLB where the monetary total of the order including, but not limited to, the monetary judgment and/or fines, is not more than $5,000, upon proper written notification, is deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction, shall be imprisoned for a term not exceeding one year, fined not more than $1,000, or both.

Where the monetary total of the order is $5,000 or more, upon written notification, is deemed guilty of a felony, and, upon conviction, shall be imprisoned for a term not exceeding 10 years, fined not more than $10,000, or both. The imprisonment time for those persons found to be a repeat offender would be increased from up to 5 years to up to ten years.

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So-called ‘right to work’ is an attack on workers (AK)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Posted June 26, 2018 06:10 am
By Dave Reaves

Have you ever had a bad day at work? It happens to all of us once in a while. Back in the days before organized labor and higher work standards people suffered at their jobs because of unsafe conditions, long hours, no training and poor benefits. Workers got hurt and were literally thrown out into the gutters, lost jobs with no notice, and had no pensions after years of toiling away.

As a nation, we’ve come a long way since the 1800s, but the effort to preserve workers’ rights is constant. Decent jobs with fair wages and benefits provide stability to our communities over the long haul. I am talking about our spouses, children, relatives and friends, people who contribute to the local economy every day.

Occasionally I hear people say, “unions were important years ago, but we just don’t need them anymore.” I couldn’t disagree more. Decades ago, when unions were at their peak, many more Americans had good pensions, good employer health care, job security and living wages. Unions have been at the forefront of every economic justice issue in America for the last 100 years: Medicare, Social Security, workers’ compensation laws, minimum wage and overtime laws, worker safety laws, and much more.

Unions have been the strongest – and often the only – counterbalance to the extraordinary attacks we’ve seen on the middle class. But after decades of unrelenting attacks on unions by the rich and powerful, those things we used to consider fundamental to the American dream are increasingly rare. These attacks on unions have unfortunately been quite successful, and the results have been all too predictable: a massive transfer of money from the middle class and poor to the top 1 percent. Think about this staggering fact: the Walton family, which owns Wal-Mart, controls a fortune equal to the wealth of the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined.

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Dave Reaves is the business manager for Local 1547. IBEW Local 1547 represents more than 4,000 workers in the state of Alaska.

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State Attorneys General can play key roles in protecting workers’ rights

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Report * By Terri Gerstein and Marni von Wilpert * May 7, 2018

Summary

State attorneys general can be key allies in protecting workers’ rights. While there are variations in the structure, resources, and jurisdiction of state attorney general offices, these offices often have a range of powers that can enable them to play a key role in advancing and defending workplace protections by ensuring that employers comply with the law. This report describes some of the ways state attorneys general have been involved in protecting workers’ rights.

Introduction: Broader state enforcement is needed to enforce workers’ rights laws

Working people in America are being shortchanged: They are working harder, but inequality is rising and wages for all but the highest-paid workers are failing to keep up with economywide productivity growth (Gould 2018). Even worse, many workers are not being paid what they are owed by their employers. The failure to enforce workers’ rights laws has resulted in billions of dollars in wages being stolen from workers’ paychecks (Levine 2018; McNicholas, Mokhiber, and Chaikof 2017). For example, in the 10 most populous states in the country, each year 2.4 million workers covered by state or federal minimum wage laws report being paid less than the applicable minimum wage in their state-approximately 17 percent of the eligible low-wage workforce.

The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)-the federal agency responsible for enforcing minimum wage and overtime laws-has been stretched increasingly thin. The number of payroll jobs in the U.S. is more than three times as large as it was in the 1940s-146.6 million in 2017 compared with 45.0 million in 1948-but the number of wage and hour investigators at WHD has remained essentially the same (BLS various years). In 1948, WHD employed one investigator for every 22,600 covered workers; today, WHD has only one per every 135,000 workers (Cooper and Kroeger 2017). As a result, the agency’s ability to effectively police violations of labor law has suffered: from 1980 to 2015, the number of wage and hour violation cases WHD investigated decreased by 63 percent (Cooper and Kroeger 2017).

Moreover, the decline in union rates has put more workers at risk of labor law violations. Workers not covered by unions-those who are neither in a union nor covered by a union contract-are almost twice as likely (4.4 percent) to experience minimum wage violations as those in a union or covered by a union contract (2.3 percent) (Cooper and Kroeger 2017). And unions continue to be under attack: Trump’s budget blueprint calls for funding cuts to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency charged with upholding private-sector workers’ rights to organize and join unions (Opfer 2018).

These staffing shortages and funding cuts show that the Trump administration is not making enforcement of our nation’s labor laws a priority. To protect workers’ rights to fair pay and fair treatment on the job, funding and resources for federal labor and employment law enforcement agencies need to increase dramatically. In addition, state governments can and should take up the fight to protect workers’ basic rights on the job. State labor departments are usually the primary enforcer of state labor laws, but there are other governmental entities that can and do engage in worker protection activities, including state attorney general offices.

This report explores the ability of state attorneys general to take up enforcement of our labor laws and protection of workers’ rights. By examining enforcement actions among a number of states, this report highlights the various ways state attorneys general exercise jurisdiction to protect workers and enforce labor laws.

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(PDF Copy of Full Report)

Grand Theft Paycheck: The Large Corporations Shortchanging Their Workers’ Wages

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

by Philip Mattera with a chapter on policy recommendations by Adam Shah
June 2018

New research finds that a wide range of big corporations have been shortchanging the people who work for them Washington, DC-A new report finds that many large corporations operating in the United States have boosted their profits by forcing employees to work off the clock, cheating them out of required overtime pay and engaging in similar practices that together are known as wage theft.

The detailed analysis of federal and state court records shows that these corporations have paid out billions of dollars to resolve wage theft lawsuits brought by workers. Walmart, which has long been associated with such practices, has paid the most, but the list of the most-penalized employers also includes Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other large banks and insurance companies as well as major technology and healthcare corporations. Many of the large corporations are repeat offenders, and 450 firms have each paid out $1 million or more in settlements and/or judgments.

These are among the findings in Grand Theft Paycheck: The Large Corporations Shortchanging Their Workers’ Wages published today by the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First and Jobs With Justice Education Fund. It is available at www.goodjobsfirst.org/wagetheft

“Our findings make it clear that wage theft goes far beyond sweatshops, fast-food outlets and retailers. It is built into the business model of a substantial portion of Corporate America,” said Good Jobs First Research Director Philip Mattera, the lead author of the report.

(Read More – Press Release)

(PDF Copy of Full Report)

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High-Road Development: Building Prosperity for Workers and the District

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Brittany Alston * July 2, 2018
Economic Development / Jobs & Training

Executive Summary
Over the past twenty years, the District has seen dramatic economic and population growth, including a development boom that has transformed the city’s skyline, remade neighborhoods, and changed the city’s employment landscape. These changes have led to prosperity for some, but that prosperity has not been shared with DC’s low-wage workers. District leaders should seize on DC’s growth as an opportunity to encourage “high-road development,” pairing development with high-quality jobs in ways that will support workers, residents, and high-quality development projects.

By taking a high-road economic development approach-in which developers partner with unions, invest in workers, and provide quality employment opportunities to residents-the District can ensure that the city’s ongoing growth provides benefits to DC residents and workers. Unfortunately, District leaders have missed many opportunities to practice high-road development. In projects such as the Wharf and Union Market, the city has sweetened development deals with large subsidy packages, without setting job quality standards for District workers – subsidizing low-wage, low-quality employment that makes it hard for workers to make ends meet in a city where the cost of living keeps going up.

High-road development is associated with higher wages and benefits, reduced incidents of wage theft, and boosts to the local economy when workers spend their additional earnings. High-road development also helps ensure that projects are completed in a timely way and with high quality.

Looking to other jurisdictions that have taken a high-road approach can equip the District with tools to adopt high-road development. By enforcing existing labor laws, attaching job creation and quality standards to all economic development policies, and penalizing subsidy recipients if they fail to meet job quality requirements, policymakers can ensure that the District is taking the high road when it comes to economic development.

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A “High-Road” Approach Could Make DC Development Work for Workers and Residents

High-road economic development seeks to create an environment where both public and private entities value a diverse and skilled workforce, seeing the workforce as a profitable asset that must be sustained and invested in over time. High-road economic development ensures that public dollars result in public benefits and economic growth-this includes a high quality of life for residents and effective and transparent governance.

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During the decision-making process, developers can factor these benefits into a robust impact analysis to see the benefits of hiring union workers and paying living wages. For example, The AFL-CIO Building Investment Trust, a bank collective trust and trustee of PNC bank, invests in commercial real estate using union pension funds and relies solely on organized labor when building. Their investments created a portfolio with approximately $5 billion in net assets and 78 million hours in union construction work and created thousands of unionized operation jobs, with properties in the District and nationwide. For the AFL- CIO Building Investment Trust, high-road development remains a profitable financial proposition, as they continue to invest in union projects.

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UNIONIZATION IS A CRUCIAL COMPONENT TO HIGH-ROAD DEVELOPMENT

An essential component of high-road development is collaboration with labor unions. Many high-road developments start with project labor agreements-agreements between the building trades and project developers that govern the conditions of employment for the project and create project management efficiencies-during the project’s construction phase. Once the construction is complete, employees of the businesses located at the development site may want union representation as well.

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The cost of construction and the state’s prevailing wage (NY)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By JEFF COLTIN
JUNE 4, 2018

Anybody who has seen Gov. Andrew Cuomo give a speech in the past few years knows that New York is in the midst of a building boom.

There are marquee projects like the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge over the Hudson River or the renovation of LaGuardia Airport in Queens, and there are smaller projects like street enhancements in downtown Watkins Glen or a proposed Metro-North station at Woodbury Common Premium Outlets.

These projects are mostly publicly financed and built by private contractors – and in the midst of this building boom, some state legislators are hoping to clarify what those contractors should be paid.

The state constitution says that construction workers on state-financed projects should be paid the prevailing wage – a set rate of pay and benefits. Prevailing wage rates are maintained by the state Labor Department and vary by location and job. For example, a structural ironworker in Albany County would make $30.50 an hour plus some $27 an hour in supplemental benefits on a public project, while one in New York City would make nearly $52 an hour, plus more than $70 an hour in supplemental benefits. It’s meant to prevent contractors from undercutting wages, and to ensure workers on public projects are getting paid fairly.

A bill is being considered that would expand the number of construction projects subject to the state’s prevailing wage rates. In practice, the bill is meant to clarify the definition of “public work,” legislating that even largely private projects that receive tax breaks or other government subsidies are still required to pay a prevailing wage to workers. The bill’s sponsors say that judicial rulings have caused loopholes that allow contractors to not pay full wages.

Advocates for workers say the state is paying for poor working conditions. “Too often in construction, we see a race to the bottom where unscrupulous contractors are receiving taxpayer dollars to subsidize development with little to no standards in place for the workers on these projects,” said Patrick Purcell, executive director of the Greater New York Laborers-Employers Cooperation and Education Trust, in a press release supporting the legislation.

(Read More)

See Related Article: New York State Prevailing Wage Law: Defining Public Work,

Fred B. Kotler, J.D., Cornell University ILR School (March 2018)

Many DC projects don’t comply with local hiring mandate (DC)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Kim Slowey
PUBLISHED July 2, 2018

Dive Brief:

An April audit of Washington, D.C.’s First Source mandate, which requires local workers be given employment preference for construction projects receiving taxpayer assistance, revealed that contractors and developers are not meeting the program guidelines and that the Department of Employment Services (DOES) is doing relatively little to make sure companies are in compliance, according to The Washington Times. Companies building qualifying projects of $300,000 to $5 million must hire 51% local residents, and those in charge of projects valued at more than $5 million must meet a higher percentage in several categories.

Lawrence Perry, deputy auditor for the Office of the D.C. Auditor, testified before the District council’s Committee on Labor and Workforce Development on June 21 and told the committee members that the agency in charge of enforcing the First Source program was insufficiently monitoring qualifying companies to make sure they entered into a First Source agreement; lacked written policies and procedures necessary to monitor and judge the success of First Source and did not have written guidelines for enforcement and imposition of fines, with only one financial penalty being issued in the history of the program. The auditor’s report also called attention to the fact that companies are allowed to self-report project data with little or no verification by the DOES.

Construction industry groups have said the program paperwork is too burdensome. They also said there is a shortage of skilled workers and that the lack of affordable housing is forcing the First Source-qualified employees that once lived in the District to the suburbs, shrinking the pool of craft workers even more. One council member said developers and contractors consider the possibility of a low fine just another cost of doing business.

Dive Insight:

Other local governments have no problem enforcing local hiring mandates and levying large fines against contractors that miss the mark.

Detroit fined contractors working on the $868 million Little Caesars Arena, now home to the NHL’s Red Wings hockey team and the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, a total of $5.2 million for not meeting the city’s 51% local-hire goals. The Michigan city said that, of the project’s three million man-hours, Detroit residents worked only 25%.

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As Colorado construction industry makes plans to hire 30,000, Denver is using its leverage to add local-hiring rules on projects (CO)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

National Western Center’s $275 million site-prep contract is first to require outreach to lower-income areas

By JON MURRAY
PUBLISHED: June 25, 2018 at 7:00 am

The Denver metro area’s construction boom is about to intensify as upward of $4 billion in big projects get underway in the city, requiring a lot of hiring to fill jobs on building sites.

And for the first time, local leaders have used the city’s leverage on a large public contract to make sure residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods share in the thousands of new jobs. The City Council on June 11 approved a $275 million site-preparation contract – the first nine-figure deal for the National Western Center project – that requires Hensel Phelps Construction and its subcontractors to recruit heavily from the city’s six most economically disadvantaged ZIP codes, largely southwest and northeast of downtown.

For now, the requirements in the pilot program stop short of setting local-hiring quotas or even targets, and it’s considered a bit of a dry run.

But if the initiative is successful at training residents and placing them in project jobs, it could portend more aggressive steps by the City Council and Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration to extract local job benefits on some upcoming projects.

Construction is an industry flush with opportunity in coming years, both for entry-level jobs and those that require light training or apprenticeship programs, from masons to electricians to pipefitters. Starting wages for many jobs begin at $13 or higher.

The state’s industry employs about 175,000 workers, according to the Associated General Contractors of Colorado, and that’s slightly more than the pre-Great Recession peak in 2007. But a Colorado State University study has projected the industry will need to fill 14,000 more positions in the next five years, a figure that equates to hiring 30,000 new workers, once baby boomers’ retirements and other attrition are factored in.

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Gary Frueh: Need for prevailing wage

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

POSTED ON JULY 1, 2018
Gary Frueh – Guest Columnist

There is a lot of discussion lately on prevailing wage. It is important to understand more about prevailing wage. Wages are set for areas according to living standards. You wouldn’t want to pay construction wages based on New York City or Los Angeles in Lima, Ohio. Many different entities do this, including health care providers. It just sets wages prevalent to an area.

Does prevailing wage, tend to raise wages some? It sets standards for an area. Training programs that assure work being done is both accurate and efficient under prevailing wage. Otherwise, it becomes an item to undercut the bidding process.

Let’s get to the heart of the issue. To say work done is better or worse under prevailing wage needs background.

A past study out of the University of Utah prepared for the Kansas State Senate Labor and Industries Committee stated these facts when prevailing wage was removed in Kansas:

* Wage incomes in Kansas construction fell 10%. Employer pension and health insurance contributions fell 17%

* Construction workers covered by collective bargaining in Kansas received health insurance and employer contributions, only 10% of workers in open shop received pension and only 4% received health insurance from their employer.

* Apprenticeship training in Kansas construction fell 38% after repel. Minority apprenticeships fell by 54%.

* Serious injury rates in Kansas construction rose by 21%

* The projected gain from repel a 6% to 17 % savings on state construction costs failed to materialize.

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Why does prevailing wage make sense. It establishes a wage scale that is harder to manipulate and consistent with living costs of an area. Think of it this way. All our State Legislators are paid a specific wage. While the cost of living in Cleveland is much higher than Lima the legislator is paid the same. The taxpayer is bearing the burden of paying one too much or one not enough. In any case a prevailing wage scenario might fit their circumstance very well.

There are good reasons to keep prevailing wage laws in protecting the consumer, taxpayers and the communities from bearing the burden of increasing taxes on its residents to make up for losses incurred as past factual studies on prevailing wage have shown.

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Opinion: Michigan’s prevailing wage repeal will hurt workers

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Sean McGarvey and Doug Maibach
June 30, 2018

Michigan’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy keeps promoting the Michigan Legislature’s repeal of prevailing wage protections without considering the latest facts. One of Mackinac’s recent articles calls on the federal government to take a cue from Michigan and advance an effort to repeal federal prevailing wage protections.

Prioritizing ideology over evidence, it doesn’t cite the most advanced economic research on prevailing wage laws, fails to include industry experts, and, even worse, ignores the accounts of construction workers, the building trades unions and high-road contractors who readily pay prevailing wages – the people most impacted by the Legislature’s decision.
If Mackinac had done its research, it would find that there is no statistical relationship between prevailing wage laws and contract costs. In any industry, an employer can reduce labor costs by reducing turnover and using competitive, fair wages to attract and retain the industry’s most productive workers.

Mackinac claims that cutting “inflated wages” for blue-collar construction workers saves taxpayer dollars or lowers costs on a given project, but this obscures the fact that the money will simply be absorbed by other white-collar participants in that same construction project – whether it be the architect, engineer, Wall Street financiers, insurance carriers or project suppliers. Interestingly, these other participants’ wages are never accused of being unfair or inflated.

Construction labor accounts for about 20 percent of a typical project’s overall cost, and Mackinac says the repeal will cut project costs by 15-20 percent. So, following Mackinac’s logic, the construction workforce would work for nothing.

Without prevailing wage protections, responsible contractors must increasingly compete against “low road” contractors who frequently fail to invest in meaningful training and do not offer health and retirement benefits for their workers. The reckless market this creates diminishes incentive, in the form of investments in wages, benefits and training, for both the building of human capital in the construction industry and the retention of human capital over the long run.

Ultimately, this leads to the erosion of community wage and benefit standards, shoddy work and unsafe work sites, and less young people, women, communities of color and veterans joining the skilled trades.

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