De Blasio legislation expands prevailing wage (NY)

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Stephon Johnson | 12/12/2019, 3:20 p.m.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a bill that will expand guaranteed prevailing wages to building service workers.

“It is really a good example of doing something that will change and improve the lives of working people and at the same time allow us to keep building on the central goal of making this a city that working people can afford,” said de Blasio during a news conference for the bill’s signing. “And we are committed to our long term vision on affordable housing and appreciate how much our colleagues in labor and the unions involved here but also beyond have been supportive throughout of our larger goals on affordable housing.”

The Intro-1321 A legislation makes sure the prevailing wage for building service workers reflects and builds off of wage and benefits reforms aimed at reducing income inequality that include paid sick leave, fair work week and raising the minimum wage.

According to the city, since 2012, prevailing wages were required for building service employees in most developments where a private developer received at least $1 million in discretionary financial assistance from City Hall. But the law exempted affordable housing projects from the wage standard.

The sponsor of Intro. 1321-C, New York City Council Member Rafael Espinal, said that workers’ wages should coincide with the cost of living.

“As our city becomes a more expensive place to live, we have to push for laws that close its wealth gap,” stated Espinal. “The city is also facing a housing crisis that has to be addressed not just by looking at how much affordable housing is available, but by examining what kind of jobs are available as well.

“I introduced this prevailing wage law because it is the standard we set during the East New York Neighborhood Plan,” continued Espinal. “Of the 100% affordable housing that is being built, each building is now going to provide prevailing wages to its staff. If we did it in East New York, we can do it citywide.”

The bill covers additional developers and projects via removing the current exemption in the Prevailing Wage Law for affordable housing projects and not-for-profit developers of residential projects. Currently, building service employees in most residential projects that receive at least $1 million in financial assistance for new construction or preservation will be guaranteed the prevailing wage.

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Council OKs better pay for workers at subsidized developments (NY)

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WILL BREDDERMAN
November 14, 2019 03:39 PM

The business of affordable housing is about to get more expensive.

The City Council voted Thursday to obligate below-market housing developments that receive $1 million or more in city assistance pay prevailing wage to the staff members who maintain the structures and tend to tenant needs.

The bill’s passage marks a victory for building service workers union 32BJ SEIU and a defeat for the industry groups that argued the proposal would have a “crippling” effect on the construction of low-cost apartments.

Brooklyn Councilman Rafael Espinal’s legislation exempts affordable complexes where at least 50% of tenants are formerly homeless, disabled or receiving on-site social or health services, as well as smaller buildings and projects where the city has invested to preserve rather than construct below-market units.

Espinal insisted that his bill is a necessary component of keeping New Yorkers from being priced out of the five boroughs.

“This crisis has to be addressed not just by looking at how much affordable housing is available but also looking at what kind of jobs are available,” he said.

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Taking workforce development to school (OR)

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By Josh Kulla
10/24/19

Contractors in the Portland-metro area are continuing to address the skilled labor shortage by reaching out to educators. Walsh Construction, for example, is helping Benson Polytechnic High School build up its construction technology program.

Last year, Walsh employees spent time in the Benson woodshop to give students hands-on carpentry construction. This year, expansion has allowed instructors to take better advantage of Carpenters International Training Fund (CITF) curriculum. And from a pair of half-full woodworking classes a year ago, the construction technology program has grown to around 100 enrollees – approximately 10 percent of the Benson student body – engaging in classes that could lead them to careers in the skilled trades.

Participants in the two-year program take courses focusing on construction industry soft skills and preliminary hard skills they can use to eventually learn a trade or even go into project management. Students even are taught how to use 3-D modeling software.

“We’ve dramatically changed in the sense of participation,” said Benson woodworking instructor Dave Ketah, a former design professional. “We started the new elective woodworking, and last year was my first year on staff here, so on some level there is new direction for our department. We have gained some really good, new strategy; we have the partnership with Walsh and we’re amplifying our participation and our coverage of the curriculum we use from CITF.”

All told, students who participate in woodworking all year will have taken enough CITF coursework to earn pre-apprenticeship level 3 status, Ketah said. They will have soft skills and building skills needed to qualify for an apprenticeship with their local carpenters union – in this case, United Brotherhood of Carpenters Local 1503 of Oregon City.

A few of Ketah’s former students already are making their way into the industry.

“The results are that we have had students in our partnership with the (Pacific Northwest Carpenters Institute) entered into an apprenticeship,” he said. “We had a visit from a student last month who graduated last year and he told us about it. He got some credit for this stuff here and for doing the PNCI construction camp. He got pre-apprenticeship credits that put him as a second-term apprentice.”

Someone following that same path, Ketah said, could earn as much as $80,000 annually after reaching journeyman status at age 22.

“We’re able to tell that story to our students as we recruit them to come into our program,” he said.

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Nashville schools to enact stricter rules after wage theft allegations against subcontractor (TN)

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Published 6:51 p.m. CT
Dec. 10, 2019

Nashville public schools will require thorough documentation of work done on its construction projects after a group of concrete workers recently alleged wage theft against a district subcontractor.

“Going forward, the facilities and construction department will require contractors and all subcontractors have written contracts for work being performed,” said Metro Nashville Public Schools Interim Superintendent Adrienne Battle during a Tuesday night board meeting. “That way, if there is a wage theft claim or payment dispute in the future, there will be more documentation to help get to the bottom of the situation.”

The change comes after allegations that Nashville’s Orion Building Company subcontracted with Joe Haas Construction, which in turn hired the concrete company – RSA Concrete – for cement work at McMurray Middle School.
Workers said the concrete company was never paid $43,000 for work by the subcontractor and are alleging wage theft.

A similar incident occurred during work on a Vanderbilt University building, the group said, and the school placed pressure on the contractor to ensure payment.

Nashville schools has paid its contractual obligations to Orion and district staff have facilitated a meeting to resolve the issue. Battle said another meeting is forthcoming.

“Normally, contractual disputes like this will be settled by mediators or courts, but we are trying to facilitate a productive path forward towards a quick resolution,” Battle said.

Last month, Workers’ Dignity asked the district to ensure contractors require bonds to ensure payment for work at a site. Nashville public schools, Battle said, already requires bonds that ensure payment for work being performed.

The change will require more overall documentation. Workers’ Dignity Interim Co-Director Jack Willey said to the board that he wants the documentation process to be as simple as possible to ensure its effectiveness for all workers.

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Construction ‘Coyotes’ costing Utah taxpayers millions (UT)

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NOVEMBER 18, 2019
BY ADAM HERBETS

SALT LAKE CITY – It’s an illegal business practice that most people in the construction industry consider an open secret: “coyotes” smuggling people into the workforce.

It’s a problem one state senator describes as a “robbery” of our tax dollars on some of the biggest construction sites across Utah.

FOX 13 News has discovered hundreds of employees are being paid in cash under the table on a weekly basis instead of paying taxes.

Patrick Bieker, the lead union representative with the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters in Utah, has been fighting for stricter regulations against anyone who encourages employees to work for cash.

“We refer to them as ‘coyotes,’ or labor brokers,” Bieker said. “They typically use fear to keep their workforce in line.”

According to the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters, the manpower on most job sites does not come from the general contractor – or even the subcontractors. Instead, they say it comes from coyotes who help the subcontractors limit the amount of fees they pay per employee.

“They don’t pay the workers comp, the unemployment insurance, state and federal taxes. You know, any of the burden that a responsible contractor pays,” Bieker said. “It’s just a constant race to the bottom. Let’s make sure everybody’s getting screwed!”

Workers turn on their coyote… and blame the subcontractors who led them there
Since he learned of the problem, Bieker has hired a number of anonymous informants who work on large job sites across the state. They take pictures of their payments every week, typically large sums of cash handed to them in an envelope inside small office buildings across Salt Lake City.

One of the workers told FOX 13 he has been a legal resident in the United States since 1999. He said he has a green card, but when he tried to get a job with a local subcontractor, the company told him to call a man named Sergio Coronado instead.

“The first payment, envelope, cash. It was like three months, two months and a half I think,” the worker said. “I wanted to pay my taxes, you know?”

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Feds: Construction Company Imported H-2B Foreign Workers to Pay Low Wages (SD)

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A South Dakota construction company imported foreign workers on the H-2B visa program in order to cut costs and pay lower wages, Labor Department officials say.

By John Binder
Oct. 21, 2019

Every year, U.S. companies are allowed to import 66,000 low-skilled H-2B foreign workers to take blue-collar, non-agricultural jobs. For some time, the H-2B visa program has been used by businesses to bring in cheaper foreign workers and has contributed to blue-collar Americans having their wages undercut.

Dagel Steel Construction, based in Florence, South Dakota, violated federal law by recruiting H-2B foreign workers from South Africa and Mexico to take jobs in the United States only to pay them below-market wages, according to the Labor Department.

The construction company paid H-2B foreign workers low wages, assigned them to work in locations not authorized by the Labor Department, to work jobs outside of the workers’ job descriptions, as well as failing to pay for the workers’ housing costs, visa fees, transportation costs. The company deducted money from the workers’ already low wages.
Labor Department official Betty Campbell said in a statement:

The U.S. Department of Labor sought debarment of Dagel Steel Construction because the employer failed to comply with well-documented requirements of the H-2B Visa Program. The employer’s obligations are clearly detailed during the process of seeking certification to hire temporary foreign laborers.

Now, Dagel Steel Construction will be banned from importing foreign workers through the various H visa programs for five years and must pay nearly $70,000 in back wages to 16 H-2B foreign workers. The company also must pay more than $30,000 in civil penalties.

For nearly three years, President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has routinely expanded the number of H-2B foreign workers that businesses are allowed to import to take blue-collar U.S. jobs. In May, for example, Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan approved an additional 30,000 H-2B foreign workers for businesses to import.

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Union accuses contractors, owners of Amazon buildings of labor violations (VA)

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By Patricia Sullivan
Dec. 12, 2019 at 2:10 p.m. EST

A union is charging that employers at six construction projects that will house Amazon employees or operations in Northern Virginia have evaded federal and state taxes by misclassifying workers, failing to carry workers’ compensation coverage and avoiding overtime pay.

In a 24-page report based on its own investigation, the Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters alleges multiple violations of federal labor law by general contractors, subcontractors and labor brokers who supply workers for projects owned and managed by four development companies and intended for Amazon.

(Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

If true, the allegations would raise the profile of the issue of labor law violations in Virginia, a right-to-work state, just as Amazon is seeking approval before the Arlington County Board for building its own headquarters on property it has purchased in the Pentagon City neighborhood.

The board is scheduled to vote on that proposal on Saturday.

JBG Smith Properties, which owns three of the six properties that the union cites, said in a statement Thursday that it cannot respond to specific claims since it has not seen the union’s report.

“That said, when JBG Smith is made aware of these types of claims, it works closely with its general contracting partners to ensure they are rectified,” the statement said.

Owners of the other locations could not be reached for comment.

Three of the structures under renovation are temporary space for Amazon employees in Arlington until their permanent headquarters is built. A warehouse in Springfield and data centers in Manassas and Sterling are also cited.

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Time to undo prevailing wage debacle [Opinion] (WV)

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By Rick Wilson
Nov 5, 2019

In 2016, the West Virginia Legislature repealed the state’s prevailing wage law, which set pay standards for workers on public construction projects.

The intent of prevailing wage laws was to prevent these projects from turning into a race to the bottom, with out-of-state contractors profiting at the public expense by underbidding local businesses and importing low wage, low skill workers laboring under unsafe conditions.

The idea for that kind of legislation didn’t come from a bunch of labor radicals. Rather it was the brainchild of two Republican U.S. senators, James J. Davis of Pennsylvania and Robert L. Bacon of Long Island, New York.

In 1927, Bacon was angered to learn that an Alabama contractor won a bid to build a veteran’s hospital in his district, bringing in poorly treated workers to do the job. In his words, they were “herded onto this job, they were housed in shacks, they were paid a very low wage, and … it seems to me that the federal government should not engage in construction work in any state and undermine the labor conditions and the labor wages paid in that state.”

In his view, setting locally based wage standards for public projects would ensure fairness and allow local and distant contractors to compete for bids on an equal basis.
Davis believed that the government had a responsibility to “comply with the local standards of wages and labor prevailing in the locality where the building construction is to take place.”

Their legislation, known as the Davis-Bacon Act, was passed in congress in 1931 and became the model for state prevailing wage laws, including the one that used to protect West Virginia’s workers and contractors.

Opponents of the legislation, who, as far as I can tell, are also opponents of working people generally, argued that repealing the legislation would save taxpayers money.
For example, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, argued at the time that “without prevailing wage, you could build five schools for the price of three.” He also claimed that the repeal would save the state $200-300 million annually.

If that really happened, the state would have a huge budget surplus. Instead, the governor has ordered $100 million in cuts due to a budget shortfall.

And the School Building Authority reported in 2017 that, while workers’ wages had gone down on school projects since repealing prevailing wage, “the overall cost of school construction does not reflect a reduction of overall construction costs on SBA projects at this time. At this time the SBA is not realizing an overall savings that would allow for the construction of ‘five new schools for the price of three,’ as some have previously claimed.”
What did go down were the inflation-adjusted wages of carpenters, electricians and operating engineers.

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Report: Labor cites 526 Jobs Act violations, imposes $106,450 of fines (WV)

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By Phil Kabler
10/23/19

CHARLESTON – In the 2018-19 budget year, the Division of Labor cited 526 violations of the Jobs Act, fining contractors a total of $106,450, according to a report to the West Virginia Legislature.

Enacted in 2001, the Jobs Act is intended to assure that 75% of jobs on state-funded public works projects go to local workers. It authorizes the Division of Labor to impose fines of up to $100 a day on employers who knowingly violate the act.

A legislative audit released in June concluded that the Jobs Act has been largely ineffective, in part because in order to comply with federal law, local markets were defined to include out-of-state counties that are within 50 miles of the West Virginia line.

The audit found that means workers residing in 150 counties surrounding West Virginia, with a total population of 17.3 million people, are considered part of the local market area. The local market includes the major metropolitan areas of Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.

“In terms of general population, West Virginia makes up 9.5% of the local labor market,” the audit noted.

The audit also concluded that the Division of Labor receives no additional funding for Jobs Act compliance, and relies on 18 inspectors statewide to enforce the act – along with multiple other regulations that the inspectors enforce.

According to the report to the Legislature, Labor inspectors conducted 338 Jobs Act field inspections in 2018-19 and reviewed employment and payroll records for 1,943 construction projects.

While the majority of projects in the report were listed as in compliance with the Jobs Act, contractors and projects cited as being out of compliance were:

-S&D Industrial Painting of Tarpon Springs, Florida, six citations on a Division of Highways project in Nicholas County.
-HVB ICF Contractors of Gay Mills, Wisconsin, on a Mercer County Board of Education project.
-Southern Trades of Louisville, Kentucky, on a Doddridge County Board of Education project.
-Bonsai Design of Grand Junction, Colorado, on a Division of Natural Resources project in Summers County.
-KVK Contractors of Tarpon Springs, Florida, on a West Virginia Parkways project in Kanawha County.
-Oglesby Construction of Norwalk, Ohio, on a West Virginia Parkways project in Mercer County.

Additionally, 20 employers requested 353 Jobs Act waivers and were granted waivers for 341 workers.

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