AMERICA’S BUILDING TRADES
2014 LEGISLATIVE CONFERENCE
March 9 – March 12, 2014
Washington Hilton & Towers Hotel
1919 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC
Construction bids for state-funded capital construction projects could soon be subject to wage requirements that alter the way in which companies compete for the jobs.
Labor Commissioner Annie Noonan told lawmakers Wednesday that Gov. Peter Shumlin’s administration is advocating a switch to the federal prevailing wage as the basis for contract requirements on state capital construction projects. The administration also suggests requiring a prevailing wage for construction workers for all state-funded capital construction projects, regardless of how much they cost.
The Third District Court of Appeals handed American workers a victory with their ruling in the case of Louisiana Forestry Association v. Secretary, U.S. Department of Labor. The court found that the Department of Labor’s wage regulation methodology is valid pertaining to H-2b visas, meaning the Department of Homeland Security must rely on the Labor Department’s decisions about the number of American workers available for a job.
The Kentucky State Building and Construction Trades Council has commissioned a new study considering the effects of repealing Kentucky’s prevailing wage law. See below for a full copy of the report by Prof. Philips, University of Utah.
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
Summit Natural Gas of Maine agrees to pay millions owed to contractors for pipeline work
AUGUSTA — The company readying the Kennebec Valley’s massive natural gas pipeline says it has agreed to pay contractors tens of millions of dollars included in a lawsuit against the utility last month.
A top official at Summit Natural Gas of Maine, the company preparing to energize its network stretching from Richmond to Madison, said $38 million has been owed to between 10 and 20 contractors for months, and the company plans to pay money owed to those contractors for work done by Jan. 10.
Construction companies across Texas that work on public projects are on notice now that the targeted worker misclassification crackdown passed by the legislature in 2013 has taken effect.
HB 2015 “Worker Classification” was signed into law on June 14, 2013, and became effective on January 1, 2014. This law is considered by many to be a good first step in the fight against the problem that is especially rampant in residential and commercial construction. But, advocates for workers and for a fair marketplace understand that much more needs to be done in the years to come if the playing field is going to be leveled so that ethical companies will be able to compete. While putting these penalties in place on public projects will help in the commercial sector, nothing at all will change in residential construction.
A federal judge in California recently held that workers suing Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and one of its warehouse operators, can go forward with their case to trial on the question of whether Walmart and the warehouse operator are liable as “joint employers” for alleged violations of hundreds of Southern California warehouse workers’ rights.
In making her determination to allow the workers to sue Walmart, the judge focused on the “economic realities” of the workplace and evidence showing that Walmart and its subcontractor, Schneider Logistics Trans-Loading and Distribution, controlled the terms and conditions of work performed by warehouse workers-who were officially employed by labor service subcontractors as, what is increasingly referred to as, “permatemps.”