CA Dept. of Industrial Relations | NEWS RELEASE
Release Number: 2021-122
Date: December 16, 2021
Long Beach— The Labor Commissioner’s Office collected $2,631,876 in wages and $37,672 in apprenticeship training funds resulting from a prevailing wage assessment against Torrance-based general contractor TOBO Construction, Inc. The wages collected will compensate 100 workers for unpaid prevailing wages and overtime while working on a construction project on El Camino Community College’s campus in Torrance.
“Contractors on publicly-funded construction projects must pay workers a prevailing wage,” said Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower. “TOBO Construction, Inc. cheated these workers out of millions of dollars in pay and benefits.”
El Camino Community College District hired TOBO Construction, Inc., a general building, engineering and electrical contractor, as prime contractor to build a $35 million Student Services Center building. Workers hired included bricklayers, carpenters, drywall installers, laborers, ironworkers, steel framers and other trades workers.
The Labor Commissioner’s Office opened its investigation in May 2018 after receiving a report of public works violations from the Carpenters Contractors Cooperation Committee and the Painters and Allied Trades Compliance Administrative Trust. The investigation included interviews with over 40 workers and an audit of payroll records, which were turned over only after the investigators served subpoenas on TOBO Construction, Inc.
The investigation determined that TOBO Construction had maintained false payroll records over a 31-month period to cover up the wage theft. The contractor hired brokers to provide staffing for the construction project, and those brokers paid the workers in cash or personal checks $100 to $160 per day. Investigators reviewed thousands of falsified checks that were not issued to workers, many of them signed by the same person.
Additionally, investigators found that TOBO Construction failed to comply with apprenticeship requirements for a public works project. TOBO Construction failed to provide contract award information to all applicable apprenticeship committees, and failed to hire apprentices in the required ratio of one hour of apprentice work for every five hours performed by journeypersons in the applicable craft or trade.