Sen. Gary Peters wants to hear from workers victimized by wage theft (MI)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Anne Runkle
August 5, 2019

U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Michigan) wants to hear from workers who have been victims of wage theft.

Peters is conducting an investigation into wage theft practices, which could include:

  • Failure to pay the applicable minimum wage
  • Failure to compensate employees for overtime
  • Misclassifying employees as independent contractors to avoid paying certain benefits or taxes.

Peters, ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has directed the committee’s minority staff to conduct an investigation focused on these and other actions that prevent employees from receiving all of their pay.

If you have information to share regarding your personal experiences with wage theft, visit https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/contact/investigations.

“If you put in a hard day’s work, you deserve to get paid for it. Yet every day, workers in Michigan and across the country are denied wages or benefits they have earned on the job,” said Peters. “This investigation will help expose wage theft and develop ways to hold employers who break the rules accountable for actions that hurt hard-working families.”

Wage theft has serious financial consequences for workers and businesses, according to a release from Peters. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that American workers are shorted as much as $15 billion each year due to minimum wage law violations.

Michigan has the fifth highest total of unpaid earnings in the country due to minimum wage violations.

According to EPI, from 2013 to 2015, roughly $430 million in wages were improperly withheld from Michigan workers.

Misclassifying workers as “independent contractors” also negatively impacts taxpayers. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, millions of employers nationwide have failed to pay more than $45 billion in employment taxes.

These practices deprive the federal government of billions of dollars in unpaid employment taxes that are used to fund Social Security, Medicare and other benefits, according to the release.

In Michigan alone, a study released in 2008 found that Michigan loses tens of millions of dollars annually from improper classification practices – depriving the state of dollars for projects like highway and infrastructure upgrades, educational programs or public hospitals.

(Read More)

unnamed

Minnesota Building Trades Announce Plans to Fight Wage Theft, Exploitation, Labor Trafficking (MN)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Filiberto Nolasco Gomez
Workday Minnesota
July 26, 2019

BRAINERD
Leaders of 14 unions that represent Minnesota’s unionized construction workforce Thursday announced the launch of a new initiative to combat wage theft, exploitation, and labor trafficking, which they say pose a growing threat to the welfare of immigrant workers and the health of the state’s construction industry.

The Not On My Watch campaign will enlist union staff and rank-and-file members in efforts to identify cases of abuse, and to assist exploited construction workers. Union construction workers will be asked to wear hard-hat stickers that read “Not On My Watch” or “Ya No Mas” and participate in job-site actions to show solidarity with immigrant construction workers who may be vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous contractors.

“This initiative is about ensuring that no construction workers in our state are exploited and that all contractors are held accountable to the law,” said Jessica Looman, Executive Director of the Minnesota State Building and Construction Trades Council, “In Minnesota, workers stand-up for workers.”

Union members and nonunion workers joined forces last month at a rally to protest allegations of wage theft by immigrant concrete workers building the Digi-Key Expansion Project in Thief River Falls, Minnesota that was widely covered on TV and in print. A second major rally is planned for downtown Minneapolis on Monday, July 29, immediately before a Minneapolis City Council hearing on a proposed wage theft ordinance.

Minnesota Building Trades leaders were joined at the unveiling of their wage theft initiative by Attorney General Keith Ellison welcomed the announcement.

“Wage theft is theft, pure and simple. Not only does it rob workers of their ability to afford their lives, it robs them of their dignity,” Attorney General Ellison said. “It’s also often the canary in the coal mine for other serious abuses, like denial of healthcare and human trafficking, which we’ve seen right here in Minnesota. I’m proud that our new law against wage theft is the strongest in the country, but we in government can’t fight it alone. That’s why I’m grateful for the ‘Not On My Watch’ and ‘Ya No Más’ campaigns. It’s powerful that workers themselves will be on the front lines in helping us fight wage theft and helping all workers afford their lives and live with dignity and respect.”

Nancy Leppink, Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry also welcomed the announcement. “The State of Minnesota is committed to combating wage theft, but we can’t do it alone,” said Commissioner Leppink. “We will need the help of labor, community leaders, responsible employers, and of course workers themselves, to make sure workers know their rights and can bring abuses to light.”

(Read More)

unnamed

ROCHESTER WAGE THEFT CASE IS THE FIRST INVESTIGATION UNDER A NEW LAW (MN)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

According to The North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters, worker exploitation is a common practice in the Med City.

Posted: Jul 9, 2019 7:22 PM
Posted By: Annalise Johnson

ROCHESTER, Minn. – A group of Rochester area workers are pursuing a wage theft claim against Ed Lunn Construction. Workers allege Ed Lunn Construction duped them out of thousands of dollars in wages after working the majority of 2018 on a $40 million, city-funded affordable housing project that’s now filling with residents.

Lunn denies legal responsibility and says a subcontractor employed the workers who are accusing him of wage theft.

A new bipartisan law went into effect July 1st aimed at cracking down on wage theft. It doubles the amount of state investigators working on wage theft cases. Violaters can face 5 years prison and a $10,000 fine. The law will be enforceable beginning August 1st.

KIMT spoke to Mike Wille, business agent for North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters. The union advocates for workers rights. He tells KIMT that a labor broker business model exploits workers. He says employees often work long hours without overtime pay and don’t receive workers compensation of unemployment insurance. “They don’t get paid for the work that they performed, or they’ll perform work and they’ll withhold the money and then they’ll pay them for the past work as they do work in the future, so it’s like they’re dangling a carrot in front of this person and the carrot is the money they’re owed,” he explains.

According to Wille, roughly 70% of apartments and hotels built in Rochester in the last five years are built under this business model. “Shirking their responsibilities back onto the employees helps them keep their costs down and enables them to basically cheat and win jobs from contractors that play by the rules,” he says.

Minnesota’s new wage theft prevention law is one of the strongest in the country. “I hope it sets a precedent and a standard across the country for all states and cities and counties to abide by because there is no place for this kind of practice anywhere in the United States,” says Wille. “We’re better than that and our workers deserve better than to be cheated out of their wages.”

(See Article)

unnamed

Minnesota to open wage theft investigations unit (MN)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Written By: Tess Williams
Jul 16th 2019 – 12pm

Gov. Tim Walz signed a new law that invested $3.1 million to the Department of Labor and Industry to enforce wage and hour laws. The new law is designed to protect workers from exploitative employers who do not pay them for their work. The legislation adds criminal penalties for employers.

In turn, the attorney general formed a Wage Theft Unit to enforce the new law and litigate the cases. A press release from Attorney General Keith Ellison said wage theft includes “having hours shaved off your paycheck; being forced to work off the clock; not getting paid for overtime; being paid at a lower rate than promised, sometimes even below minimum wage; being paid in cash or other forms like gift cards, with no Social Security, unemployment or worker’s comp withheld; being misclassified as an independent contractor and more.”

Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Moler and investigator Ana Vergara will staff the unit. Any Minnesotan who has experienced wage theft can contact the attorney general’s office at 651-296-3353 or attorney.general@ag.state.mn.us.

(See Article)

Evers announces members of worker misclassification task force (MN)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By: Nate Beck
Jul 26, 2019

Gov. Tony Evers on Friday announced appointments to a task force that will examine worker misclassification and payroll fraud in Wisconsin.

The appointments come after Evers in April signed an executive order forming the group to re-examine how the state enforces misclassification – a practice believed to be rampant in the construction industry. The task force is charged with developing recommendations on the topic and reporting its activities and findings to the governor on or before March of each year.

“Individual agencies do a great job at combating this serious issue that adversely affects some of our most vulnerable workers, but through this task force, agency efforts will be better coordinated,” Evers said in a statement. “By evaluating each agency’s approach and investigation methods and sharing best practices, our efforts to support Wisconsin workers who are left without important safeguards like unemployment insurance and labor protections will be more strategic and coordinated.”

The task force will be staffed by the Department of Workforce Development and DWD Secretary-designee Caleb Frostman will serve as chair.

DWD’s Unemployment Insurance Division enforces worker misclassification and in 2018 conducted 2,459 audits of companies, identifying 8,877 misclassified workers. The agency last year collected more than $1.5 million in unemployment insurance taxes, interest and penalties.

“I am excited to chair this important task force and proud of the work that investigators have done and will continue to do to help eradicate worker misclassification,” said DWD Secretary-designee Frostman. “The goal of the task force is to give our front-line staff even more tools and strategies that they can employ as they continue their work to support the Wisconsin worker.”

(See Article)

Fair Contracting Foundation of Minnesota and ILEPI Address Minnesota’s AG (MN)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Minnesota’s Attorney General Keith Ellison invited Fair Contracting Foundation’s Mike Wilde and ILEPI’s Frank Manzo to present on the value of prevailing wages to nearly 400 public attorneys and regulators. The history and policy purpose behind prevailing wage laws was covered by FCF. The Illinois Economic Policy Institute’s Manzo gave the audience the findings of a recent study that examined 640 school bid packages. The academic study gave further empirical evidence to the audience of compliance professionals that the projects that required prevailing wages were no more costly than those projects that did not. Attorney General Ellison has already proven to be a champion of Minnesota’s workforce and FCF is encouraged by his commitment to prevailing wage laws.

 

                           

Why Minneapolis passed a wage-theft ordinance that essentially duplicates state law (MN)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Jessica Lee | 08/08/2019

The Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed an ordinance that establishes the city’s own set of rules to crack down on wage theft and force employers to be transparent with payrolls. The ordinance is similar to a state law that went into effect last month.

On Thursday morning, the 13-member council rewrote city code to give attorneys within the city’s Department of Civil Rights authority to enforce the municipal law against wage theft – which is when employers don’t pay employees, or pay them less than guaranteed – and require employers to provide earnings statements on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, a larger-scale effort is beginning within the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry and the attorney general’s office. Last month, Gov. Tim Walz signed a bipartisan bill to establish protections for workers that substantially grow the state’s resources for investigating allegations of wage theft – guidelines that are almost identical to the Minneapolis ordinance. Supporters call the new policies necessary considering the pervasiveness of underpayment that disproportionately affects Minnesota’s communities of color and immigrants.

But while labor and social-justice advocates celebrate the new efforts, which they describe as the toughest of their kind in the country, this question remains: Why is it necessary for Minneapolis to pass an ordinance that basically duplicates state law?

The state law

The state Labor Department estimates that up to 40,000 employees in Minnesota are not fully paid what they have earned each year. Examples of wage theft are when employees clock out but keep working, don’t receive sick and safe time or time and a half for overtime, or work more hours than promised at a flat rate.

That is what prompted the 2019 change to state law. The law set aside roughly $3 million over the next two years to establish a new investigative program and help pay the salaries of about 12 new hires, including investigators, communication personnel and researchers. In an interview last week, Labor Commissioner Nancy Leppink said the department is in the process of finalizing job descriptions. Once administrators establish the new team, she said the department will create new operating and training procedures.

Currently, Labor Department investigators mostly do “records-based” investigations by examining documentation such as employees’ pay stubs. But with the funding boost, investigators will be able to travel to employees’ workplaces to do in-person interviews and look around.

“[Onsite investigations] have greater capacity to detect various, certain kinds of wage theft, and also to detect things like labor trafficking, which you’re not going to see in … simply the review of paper records,” Leppink said. “It’s clear that we need to be getting into workplaces to find workers who may not even be on the books in terms of payroll records.”

She said the state welcomes Minneapolis’ efforts to create its own team of investigators and enforcement regulations, and staff within the city and Labor Department have been meeting regularly to coordinate strategies.

“The problem is significant, and so therefore additional resources to respond to these issues are always welcome and needed,” Leppink said. “Having more hands on deck can only make for improvements on this issue.”

(Read More)

Governor Murphy Releases Report on Employee Misclassification (NJ)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Governor Murphy Releases Report on Employee Misclassification
Announces Intent to Sign Law Giving the New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development Authority to Shut Down Job Sites When Violations Are Found

July 9, 2019, 12:08 pm
Insider NJ

ATLANTIC CITY – Governor Phil Murphy today released a comprehensive report from the Task Force on Employee Misclassification, vowing to intensify efforts to curtail the widespread and illegal practice of misclassifying workers as independent contractors instead of employees, which cheats some workers out of benefits and wages, hurts law-abiding business owners, and costs the state tens of millions of dollars a year in lost employment-related tax revenue.

The Governor has given the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (NJDOL) new tools to help put an end to misclassification and noted that his administration has already acted on eight of the task force’s 16 recommendations.

Additionally, while addressing the New Jersey State Building & Construction Trades Council’s annual convention, the Governor announced his intent to sign a bill (A-108/S-2557) giving the NJDOL the power to issue stop-work orders whenever an initial work site investigation finds sufficient violations.

“Employee misclassification hurts hardworking New Jersey workers and prevents them from receiving the benefits and the pay they worked for and deserve,” said Governor Murphy. “We know that we cannot build a stronger and fairer economy without strong worker protections. Our Administration has made cracking down on misclassification a top priority, and we will continue to root out contractors who exploit and cheat workers.”

The Governor established the task force by Executive Order No. 25 in May 2018 in response to the widespread problem of employee misclassification. In an audit last year of one percent of New Jersey businesses, NJDOL found that 12,315 workers were misclassified, resulting in $462 million in underreported wages and $14 million in lost contributions to unemployment, disability, family leave and workforce programs, according to the report.

“Misclassifying workers as 1099 employees denies them benefits, robs the State Treasury of needed revenue, and makes it harder for law-abiding businesses to compete,” said Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo. “I want to thank Governor Murphy for his leadership on this issue, which is critical to his vision for a stronger, fairer economy.”
Misclassification is especially prevalent in construction, janitorial services, home care, transportation, trucking and delivery services, and other labor-intensive, low-wage sectors.

Among the report’s recommendations are expanding interagency cooperation through coordinated enforcement, data sharing, and cooperation with neighboring states.

NJDOL already has in place a Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. Department of Labor, enabling the two agencies to more easily share information and jointly develop misclassification cases. A similar Memorandum of Understanding among New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware was signed today. The reciprocal agreement maximizes the neighboring states’ enforcement efforts through referrals, data sharing, and joint investigations.

The task force held public forums in Newark, New Brunswick, and Atlantic City, where it heard from scores of employees, employers, subject-matter experts, and others impacted by misclassification. Their experiences and comments informed the task force’s report.

(Read More)

(See PDF of Report)

New Law Championed by Greenstein and DeAngelo Bans Worker Wage Theft (NJ)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By TAPINTO HAMILTON/ROBBINSVILLE STAFF
August 7, 2019 at 4:32 PM

TRENTON, NJ — Workers will no longer need to worry about wage theft under a new law signed on Tuesday by Acting Governor Sheila Oliver to enhance enforcement of New Jersey’s wage and hour law. The measure holds employers accountable for unpaid wages, benefits, or overtime through increased damages and fines.

It also will make victims of wage theft eligible to receive both the wages owed and liquidated damages of 200 percent of wages owed.

“We must ensure that every hardworking individual in New Jersey receives the wages they worked hard to earn,” said Oliver. “I am proud to sign this legislation that will protect the rights of workers, furthering the Murphy-Oliver Administration’s commitment to build a stronger and fairer New Jersey through protecting the right to earn a fair wage.”

The law is sponsored by Hamilton and Robbinsville’s legislative representatives Senator Linda Greenstein and Assemblymembers Wayne DeAngelo. Assemblyman Dan Benson was a co-sponsor.

“The unscrupulous employers robbing the hard working people of New Jersey of their time and money need to face the consequences of their actions,” said Senator Linda Greenstein. “When wage theft is apparent, there must be effective laws in place to protect the workers of our state and to punish the employers. Wage theft is a serious crime and it is about time that our laws reflect this.”

“Above all else, this law is about workers’ rights,” said Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo. “Employers in New Jersey should be held to a high standard to treat their employees with the decency and legality they deserve. No one should be withheld one penny of the wages they are legally entitled to.”

“In signing this legislation, the Murphy Administration sends a clear message to workers that we have their backs and will protect them from being disciplined for reporting unpaid wages. And, it sends a clear message to the vast majority of businesses that we are aggressively pursuing their dishonest competitors with penalties for wage theft that are now stronger than ever,” said Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo.

The new law takes effect immediately.

(See Article)

07cb7166-8673-4075-b213-0ffebae896c5

NJ Labor Department Returns $170,000 in Back Wages to Laborers and Carpenters After Investigation into Trenton Construction Project (NJ)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

August 9, 2019, 9:44 am

TRENTON – Ten New Jersey laborers will be paid $170,000 in back wages after investigators found Tri County Real Estate Co. did not pay workers the legally required prevailing wage on a construction project at the Trenton East/West Senior Apartments.

“Public contracting is not a right – it is a privilege,” said Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo. “We want all employers to know that our department takes the state’s prevailing wage laws seriously, and we will continue to investigate these matters to protect our taxpayers’ investments.”

The construction project received State Economic Redevelopment and Growth Tax Credit Incentive grant funding, and was therefore subject to New Jersey’s prevailing wage laws.

The New Jersey Prevailing Wage Act (N.J.S.A. 34:11-56.25 et seq.) establishes wage levels for workers engaged in public works projects to protect workers, promote workforce development and prevent unfair competition for labor. In New Jersey, these rates vary by county and building trade.

The initial complaint was referred to the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (NJDOL) by the state’s federal partners at the U.S. Department of Labor.

As part of the settlement agreement, the company agreed to pay back wages due to employees, and pay $30,000 in administrative fees and penalties.

For more information on New Jersey’s wage and hour laws, please visit myworkrights.nj.gov.

(See Article)