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Wage Theft – How companies steal from our employees and communities

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

ARTICLE |  | BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN

 

Ben Basom of the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters gives the example of a worker who came forward and started talking to the union about the Portland company that he was working for and the scams he was seeing. Basom says the employee’s boss found out “and the next time we saw him, his arm was in a cast and he was all bruised up.”

The worker said, “This guy knows where my family is in Mexico.”

From July 2012 to June 2013, Oregon workers filed claims for more than $3 million in unpaid wages with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. Juan Carlos Ordonez of the Oregon Center for Public Policy (OCPP), which analyzed BOLI’s data on the claims, says that’s “just the tip of the iceberg” because workers fear retaliation if they complain about their missing wages, or they simply don’t know how or where to file a complaint. BOLI is the agency that investigates and enforces Oregon’s labor laws.

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US Labor Department signs agreement with New Hampshire Department of Labor to reduce misclassification of employees

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

WHD News Release: [11/12/2014]

WASHINGTON – Officials from the U.S. Department of Labor and the New Hampshire Department of Labor  has signed a memorandum of understanding with the goal of protecting the rights of employees by preventing their misclassification as something other than employees, such as independent contractors or other nonemployee statuses.

Under this agreement, both agencies will share information and coordinate law enforcement. The memorandum of understanding represents a new effort on the part of the agencies to work together to protect the rights of employees and level the playing field for responsible employers by reducing the practice of misclassification. The New Hampshire Department of Labor is the latest state agency to partner with the Labor Department.

“Misclassification of employees deprives workers of rightfully-earned wages and workplace protections and undercuts law-abiding businesses,” said U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez. “Which is why combating misclassification is one of several important strategies to promote shared prosperity to help ensure that our economy works for everyone.”

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Metro Brief: Norton hopes to reward fair labor practices with new bill

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

On November 10, 2014

 

When Congress reconvenes, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said that she will introduce a bill that directs federal agencies to give preferential points to federal government vendors and contractors based on their labor practices.

Points would be given to vendors and contractors that pay their employees a living wage with benefits without passing on additional costs to the federal government, as well as for permitting workers to unionize. According to Norton, these points will help level the playing field and encourage private contractors and concessionaires to treat their workforce with the dignity they deserve.

“The federal government, through contracts, funds approximately two million jobs that pay less than a livable wage,” said Norton. “The federal contracting system should not be contributing to growing income inequality. My bill will not only afford federal government contract workers a decent wage, but the federal government would see significant savings in benefits, such as food stamps it now offers to supplement the income of these low-wage workers.”

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This KY Contractor Has Spent 10 Years Fighting $50,000 in Back Wage Claims. They Finally Lost.

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

November 5, 2014

A case brought forward by the Kentucky Building Trades was recently upheld in the Kentucky Court of Appeals providing a victory for both the involved unions and their signatory contractors.  The case will mean Teco Mechanical, a non-union contractor from Lexington, will pay $54,164 in back wages to its workers along with a $5,250 penalty (plus eight percent compound interest from December of 2004).  The nearly decade-long case has gone through all levels of the Kentucky legal system and tested both the patience and perseverance of the Kentucky Labor Cabinet.

The incidents themselves date back to 2000 when Teco worked several prevailing wage projects and failed to correctly pay its employees.  The Kentucky Labor Cabinet then performed an investigation, according to the Court of Appeals opinion:

TECO is a mechanical contractor that provided contractor and subcontractor services on a number of public works projects. Pursuant to statute, contracts for these projects required TECO to pay its employees no less than the prevailing wage.1 KRS 337.510(1). In 2001, several TECO employees contacted the Kentucky Labor Cabinet and alleged that TECO had failed to pay them the prevailing wages for the work that they had performed. The employees asserted that TECO had paid them according to a formula under which it classified them as lower paid, general laborers for a fixed number of hours and as higher paid, skilled laborers for a fixed number of hours-regardless of the actual time spent working in each classification.

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Walsh issues order protecting against wage theft in Commonwealth

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Written by Remi Duhé· October 29, 2014 1:15 am

 

Boston Mayor Martin Walsh issued an executive order Thursday requiring city-contracted vendors to certify their compliance with both federal and state wage laws.

Vendors will be required to disclose previous violations of these laws to the City. Wage theft in the city of Boston affects workers and their families, particularly low-income and immigrant families, according to Friday press release from the mayor’s office.

“It’s illegal to deny fairly earned wages,” Walsh said in the release. “This executive order empowers workers to demand what they have worked for. I’m committed to stopping violations and holding employers to the letter of the law.”

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Local Company Pockets Worker’s Wages, Tax Dollars, Whistleblowers say

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Monday, October 27, 2014
Cornelius Swart, GoLocal PDX Director of Content

 

A local janitorial company that has worked on publicly-funded projects has been shortchanging its workers and pocketing their wages, according to the claims of whistleblowers.

Wage theft complaints against Cornerstone Janitorial Service of Hillsboro have been filed in Oregon and Washington and whistleblowers allege that the company hires undocumented immigrants and takes taxpayer-funded wages that rightfully belong to workers.

In response, Cornerstone tells GoLocalPDX it only hires legal residents and pays the proper wages.

But an investigation by GoLocalPDX has found that in some cases workers are only paid $12 an hour on jobs that should have been compensated at an hourly rate of $36.

(Read More)

California cracks down on wage theft by employers

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

OCTOBER 23, 2014, 5:11 PM

State regulators are wielding a new tool to combat the intractable problem of employer wage theft, which costs workers an estimated $390 million a year.

The California controller, working with the state labor commissioner, is demanding restitution from suspected violators – and filing lawsuits, if necessary – under California’s Unclaimed Property Law.

“We’re using a 55-year-old statute to compel immediate payment from unscrupulous businesses that have fleeced their employees of earned wages for years,” state Controller John Chiang said at a news conference in Fresno on Thursday.

Chiang has ordered a pair of firms, identified in a pilot project, to transfer any wages that have gone unpaid for more than a year to the state treasury. Then, the controller’s office can look for the recipients and pay them their overdue money.

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US Labor Department lawsuit alleges Wisconsin landscape service retaliated against 2 employees who filed complaint seeking overtime pay

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

U.S. Department of Labor   October 23, 2014
Wage and Hour Division

ARPIN, Wis. — The U.S. Department of Labor has sued Carl’s Landscape Service Inc. in Arpin, alleging that the company retaliated against two workers for contacting the department’s Wage and Hour Division with a complaint about unpaid overtime.

“The law prohibits employers from retaliating against any employee who files a complaint or cooperates in a Wage and Hour investigation,” said Theresa Walls, district director for the Wage and Hour Division in Minneapolis. “The Wage and Hour Division will not tolerate willful employee intimidation or coercion and will make use of every tool we have available to ensure that a fair investigation is conducted and workers are protected.”

After the company learned of the worker’s contact with the Wage and Hour Division, one employee was fired and the second was not called back following a seasonal layoff. A complaint has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin against the company and its owner, Darrell Kasner, seeking lost wages for the two employees and an injunction against future retaliation.

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US Labor Department secures nearly $2M in back wages, benefits for nearly 150 workers at federally-funded solar energy project in Nevada

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

WHD News Release: [10/23/2014] 

LAS VEGAS – The U.S. Department of Labor has recovered $1,914,681.50 in back wages and fringe benefits for 147 workers at Proimtu Mmi-Nv LLC, a Henderson-based subcontractor providing construction services at the federally funded Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Tonopah. This project, which received a $737 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, is a 110 MW solar energy power plant that will power up to 75,000 homes during peak electricity periods.

“The money we’ve recovered for these workers is not a windfall – it is their hard-earned pay that their employer was legally obligated to pay them but did not,” said Dr. David Weil, administrator of the department’s Wage and Hour Division. “Companies that benefit from federal funding must see to it that the money is used properly, and that their workers are compensated according to the law.”

An investigation found that Proimtu Mmi-Nv violated the prevailing wage and fringe benefits requirements of the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts for the majority of their employees working at the Tonopah desert solar energy project. The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project is subject to specific requirements under the DBRA since its funding includes hundreds of millions of dollars in federal loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

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Report: Seattle Needs Community Groups To Help Enforce New $15 Minimum Wage

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

For Immediate Release: October 22, 2014

Seattle, WA – Seattle made history by becoming first city in the nation to adopt a $15 minimum wage, but it will need to strengthen its labor standards enforcement to ensure that workers get the raise due to them-and community groups should play a key role in that effort, according to a new report from the National Employment Law Project.

“We don’t have a $15 minimum wage if we don’t enforce a $15 minimum wage,” said Rebecca Smith, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project and the report’s co-author. “Educating the employer community is one key to compliance, but education isn’t enough. A robust wage enforcement system needs strong partnerships with local community organizations-groups that are trusted by workers who might not be willing to file complaints directly with the city.”

(Read Full Press Release Here)

(PDF of Report)