NAFC has announced that it will be holding its 16th Annual Conference this year in the lakeside city of Chicago, IL, September 17-19, 2014.
The NAFC Conference provides a national forum for those committed to combating noncompliance of state and federal public contracting laws and draws attendance from contractors, labor unions, fair contracting organizations, attorneys and various officials from local, state and federal governments around the nation.
Pressure from increasing state budget deficits, as well as debt from underfunded pensions, have caused critics to call for the repeal of Illinois’ prevailing wage law for government construction projects.
However, according to new research co-authored by a University labor expert, Illinois’ prevailing wage law creates many positive economic and social impacts, and repealing it would not result in any considerable savings for taxpayers or the state.
“We have a strong prevailing wage law in Illinois,” said Robert Bruno, professor of labor and employment relations. “It’s better than most states in that it assures public projects are done efficiently and on time with the best results possible.”
MOORHEAD, Minn. – Area firms underpaid 78 workers almost $118,000 for several Moorhead college and university projects going back to 2011, Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry documents show.
The violations of the state’s wage and overtime laws are a sign that higher standards should be required of contractors to ensure fair pay and competition, said the leader of the Fair Contracting Foundation.
Across the country, states and localities can respond to the President’s call to action and grow wages, create jobs, and reduce income inequality in at least one sector: the construction industry. Today, the Illinois Economic Policy Institute (ILEPI) is pleased to release a new study co-authored with Professor Robert Bruno, a labor expert at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, on labor market institutions in the construction industry.
The study, Which Labor Market Institutions Reduce Income Inequality? Labor Unions, Prevailing Wage Laws, and Right-to-Work Laws in the Construction Industry, finds that prevailing wage laws did a good job matching common construction rates with the actual market price of labor, increasing worker incomes by just 1.2 percent. On the other hand, they have no negative effect on the total incomes of contractor CEOs. Prevailing wage laws, the data show, reduce income inequality between the highest earners and the lowest earners of the construction industry by 45.1 percent.
A Sacramento attorney has filed a class action in U.S. District Court in Sacramento against German industrial giant Siemens involving wage-and-hour violations against hundreds of current and former employees owed more than $10 million.
Most of the 300 to 600 proposed class members are current or former non-exempt employees at the Siemens Rail Systems manufacturing plant on French Road in Sacramento. Sacramento resident Jarrid Whitley is the lead plaintiff. He used to work at the local plant as a fitter/welder.
August 24, 2013
By Wendy Holdren Register-Herald Reporter
A group of pickets with Affiliated Construction Trades Foundation were gathered on the roadway outside the Beckley VA Medical Center this week, holding signs that read “Demand Local Jobs for Local Workers.”
Representative Wayne Rebich said his group is concerned that the company hired to build an MRI center and an adult day care center at the VA, Seawolf Construction, is not following the same laws that West Virginia contractors are obligated to follow.
Seawolf Construction is a GSA-approved contractor, according to a representative for the Beckley VA Medical Center, and is based in Jersey City, N.J.
Rebich explained that Seawolf was the lowest bidder for both of the VA projects, so his organization contacted Seawolf to encourage them to hire local subcontractors.
ELWOOD, Ill., Aug. 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — The Village of Elwood has asked a judge to require CenterPoint Properties to provide documentation to determine if the developer is in compliance with state law in paying workers a prevailing wage.
Although state law and the Tax Incremental Finance (TIF) agreement between the Village and CenterPoint require that it pay prevailing wages, CenterPoint has refused to reveal any payroll documents that would confirm that workers are receiving prevailing wages at its Deer Run Industrial Park development, which is the focus of a TIF.
Today’s court filing is the most recent development in an ongoing dispute, which prompted the Village to take legal action earlier this year after CenterPoint failed to provide information on how it spent $110 million in Village taxpayer dollars for the redevelopment of the 1,820-acre site at the former Joliet Arsenal.
California Labor Commissioner Julie Su has cited a Sacramento landscaping company with $665,000 in wage theft violations over a three-year period.
Sanctions against Michael Mello, owner of Green Valley Landscaping Services, include minimum wage violations of $338,175 for more than 40 employees, $169,088 in unpaid overtime and $157,500 for failure to provide itemized wage statements as required by California law.
OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 3, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) today officially launches the Roofing Compliance Working Group to enforce safety and labor law standards in this key industry in California.
The Roofing Compliance Working Group (RCWG) is an arm of the Labor Enforcement Task Force (LETF), a multi-agency effort to combat the underground economy and improve the state’s business environment. RCWG is a collaboration of state and local agencies as well as labor and management. The group’s objectives include rapid response to complaints of workplace health and safety hazards in the roofing industry, as well as investigation of complaints related to payroll, misclassification and workers’ compensation issues.
“The roofing industry by nature comes with inherent risks, and we want to improve workplace safety for workers and help business owners who play by the rules to thrive,” said DIR Director Christine Baker.
The National Labor Relations Board is marking Labor Day with a mobile-phone app to inform workers, employers and unions about their rights under the decades-old labor law.
“The promise of the law can only be fulfilled when employers and employees understand their rights and obligations,” NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce said in a statement. The agency received more than 82,000 public inquiries last year about workplace issues, and “this app can help provide the answers,” he said.