Nashville is being built on a pyramid of payroll tax fraud | Opinion (TN)

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According to some estimates, $2.6 billion in payroll tax fraud is lost annually, while Nashville construction projects add up to more than $2 billion.

Victor White, Guest columnist
Dec. 30, 2019

In November, a seldom-covered but far too common crime surfaced in Nashville’s news media: the case of wage theft at a Metro Nashville Public Schools-funded construction site.

A subcontractor working on the project allegedly refused to pay a local group of concrete workers, robbing them of $43,000 in wages for their work at a local school. These laborers have been calling attention to the theft for weeks and finally brought their case to MNPS at a school board meeting.

Members of the Southeastern Carpenters Regional Council were proud to stand with our brothers fighting for fair wages at the meeting, but the problems we face in the construction industry go well beyond one case of wage theft in Nashville.

Fraud is rampant across construction industry

The construction industry today is fundamentally built to allow rampant payroll tax fraud, wage theft, workers’ compensation premium fraud and worker misclassification. At each construction site a general contractor hires a subcontractor to manage different jobs: laying drywall, putting down concrete, or installing plumbing and lighting. Each of those subcontractors hires a labor broker to recruit a team of workers to get the job done. Each subcontractor competes for bids, promising they can get the job done for the least amount of money.

Many subcontractors recruit labor brokers they know will cut corners and trim costs. Sometimes, as in the case of the concrete workers, the subcontractor will fail to pay laborers and outright steal their wages. Other times subcontractors will classify workers as independent contractors, committing payroll tax fraud by avoiding paying taxes on their employees. These schemes cause law-abiding construction employers to suffer as they are underbid by rivals who keep costs down through breaking the law. …

Beyond the rampant fraud that is allowed to continue, the lack of oversight and regulation on construction sites in Nashville led to the largest rise in construction-related deaths over a 2-year period than any time in the last 30 years.

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Governor and lawmakers seek penalties against dishonest construction industry employers (TN)

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Posted: 11:58 AM, Feb 25, 2020
By Ben Hall

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) – The state is looking to crack down on dishonest employers in the construction industry.

Governor Bill Lee has proposed a bill (SB 2189) that would penalize employers who misclassify workers as independent contractors to avoid paying workers compensation insurance and then change their company name in order to avoid paying fines after they are caught.

Senator Sara Kyle (D – Memphis) has proposed a bill (SB 2404) that would shut down construction sites when employers do not immediately cooperate with state investigators.

The bills follow a NewsChannel 5 investigation which showed the dark side of Nashville’s building boom.

Some employers cheat workers out of overtime pay and cheat taxpayers out of millions of dollars by not paying for workers’ compensation insurance.

“The dishonest ones, we need to run out of the state of Tennessee,” Senator Kyle said.
Governor Lee’s proposal is sponsored by the Republican leaders of the House and Senate.

“We’re thrilled,” said Victor White with the Carpenter’s Union. “It’s a pure pleasure to see this isn’t partisan. The bills are being submitted from both sides of the aisle.”

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Letter to the editor: Restoring prevailing wage would save taxpayers money (WV)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Jan 16, 2020

As West Virginia continues to fall short on revenue collections, Gov. Jim Justice said his budget proposal is “very conservative” in his State of the State Address. But Justice missed an important opportunity in his speech to get ahead of budget shortfalls that would put students first, hire West Virginia workers and save taxpayers money.

Restoring the prevailing wage should be one of the tools state government uses to get West Virginia through the leaner times ahead. Since prevailing wage repeal, students have suffered from new schools not opening on time and with faulty school construction. This costs taxpayers dearly.

Taxpayers have lost millions of dollars from the repeal of prevailing wage. Multiple new school facilities must be redone or fixed using our government dollars. Contractors who benefit their own bottom line with shoddy school construction built by unskilled workers from out of state cost us local jobs and the state tax revenues from not having more West Virginians employed.

While taxpayers shell out money later this year to redo floors at two new schools in Fayette County, the governor and Republican leadership in the Legislature will be looking for ways to head off shortfalls with spending cuts. But government leaders should also look at the positive impact of bringing the prevailing wage back. This law will employ more West Virginians to build our schools and eliminate wasteful spending from “do overs” caused by poor school construction.

Charles Parker
President, West Virginia State Building and Construction Trades Council

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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND NEW MEXICO DEPARTMENT OF WORKFORCE SOLUTIONS PARTNER TO PROTECT THE STATE’S WORKFORCE AND ENFORCE WAGE LAWS (NM)

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Agency: Wage and Hour Division
Date: February 11, 2020
Release Number: 20-21-DAL

ALBUQUERQUE, NM – The U.S. Department of Labor and the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to expand and improve the protection of New Mexico’s workforce, strengthen enforcement of wage laws and level the playing field for responsible employers.

The MOU will allow both organizations to work together to protect employee rights, defend law-abiding employers against unfair competition and maximize taxpayer resources.

“This agreement will help us better protect New Mexico’s workers and help the state’s employers understand wage laws and avoid costly non-compliance,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Evelyn Sanchez in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “Working together, we can more effectively identify those employers that deliberately attempt to unfairly gain a competitive advantage over those that comply with the law.”

The agreement will help both agencies communicate and cooperate more effectively and efficiently in areas of common interest, including cross training staff and providing employers and employees with information about the law. By doing so, the two organizations seek to protect the wages, safety and health of America’s workforce.

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Northam releases recommendations to protect Virginia workers from misclassification, payroll fraud

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Published Sunday, Nov. 24, 2019, 7:52 pm

Gov. Ralph Northam this week released the final report of his Inter-Agency Taskforce on Worker Misclassification and Payroll Fraud, which outlines 11 recommendations to ensure Virginia workers receive the pay, workplace protections, and benefits they have earned.

The report is the result of Executive Order Thirty-Eight signed by Governor Northam in August, which directed the Taskforce to produce updated recommendations to measure and combat misclassification ahead of the 2020 General Assembly session.

An estimated 214,000 Virginia employees are currently misclassified as “independent contractors” by their employers. Among other remedies, the Taskforce recommends increased education for employers and employees, additional funding for investigations into possible wrongdoing, and harsher penalties for businesses that illegally misclassify their workers.

“It’s clear that misclassification is robbing Virginia workers of the pay, benefits, and protections they have earned,” said Northam. “These concrete policy changes will make a tremendous difference for thousands of Virginians and their families, and I look forward to working with the General Assembly to turn these recommendations into law.”

Misclassification keeps workers from receiving fair workplace protections and benefits, creates a competitive disadvantage for Virginia businesses that follow the law, and deprives the Commonwealth of an estimated $28 million in tax revenues each year. The General Assembly has considered the harm of worker misclassification for over a decade.

“After engaging with workers, businesses, and stakeholder groups over the last year, it’s clear that worker misclassification needs to be addressed,” said Chief Workforce Development Advisor Megan Healy. “I am ready to take action to support all workers in Virginia.”

The Taskforce is co-chaired by Secretary of Commerce and Trade Brian Ball and Chief Workforce Development Advisor Megan Healy. Members include representatives from the Virginia Employment Commission, the Workers’ Compensation Commission, the Department of General Services, the Department of Labor and Industry, the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, the Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity, the Department of Taxation, and the Office of the Attorney General.

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Punching In: Slowing Down the DOL Apprenticeship Train

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Bloomberg Law
Nov. 12, 2019

Ben Penn: With National Apprenticeship Week upon us, Team Trump surely would like the public to believe the Labor Department has cleared up an appropriations error surrounding the administration’s principal job training initiative.

The DOL recently admitted to misusing about $1.1 million on the Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship Program that still hasn’t been finalized, dipping into a pot of money designated for a separate apprenticeship program that’s been around for decades. The snafu took place under former Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, based on orders from an ex-policy adviser. The department says it already has taken multiple steps to correct the issue. Besides, the $1.1 million in question is a drop in the bucket relative to the DOL’s overall budget.

Nothing left to see here, right?

Were it only that simple.

Not everyone’s certain the DOL has resolved the spending mistake. Lingering questions could slow the White House’s effort to put together a final rule to establish the new, industry-led job training model.

We already know the department’s inspector general looking into the potential budget violation and the Democrat-controlled House Education and Labor Committee is continuing its oversight requests.

Now we can add North America’s Building Trades Unions to the list of groups demanding answers. The construction union umbrella organization is one of the few labor groups that have found a way to work on certain issues with the Trump White House. Lately, however, it’s using the IRAP proposal to ramp up attacks on this administration.

Mike Monroe, chief of staff of the building trades group, called news of the misspent money “frustrating.” The department’s Employment and Training Administration vowed during the Acosta regime that it wouldn’t use the new IRAP system to undermine the longstanding registered apprenticeship system, a crucial job training source for the building unions. Monroe wants to be sure the department is weighing all of the public feedback it received on a proposed rule to establish the IRAP system.

The union led a public comment blitz slamming the industry-friendly IRAP proposed rule, with thousands of blue-collar union members opposing the rule.

“If there are ethical lapses in the misuse of funds then we’re rightfully concerned there may well be ethical lapses in the review and consideration of all the public comments-which is to say they’ve already made their minds up here,” Monroe said. “Our membership is watching this issue really closely” and “we are highly concerned that this undefined process that is now being funded inappropriately, it seems, may undermine their ability to safely earn a living in the construction crafts.”

Even if only $1.1 million was misspent, the ongoing scrutiny offers a convenient vehicle for NABTU, Democratic lawmakers, and others on a mission to stop the White House apprenticeship push in its tracks.

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Sean McGarvey column: Don’t leave construction workers in regulatory limbo

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Bloomberg Law
Nov. 12, 2019

The union construction industry plays a critical role in the American economy, representing not only viable middle-class career opportunities with labor protections, benefits and economic security for American workers and their families. It also provides debt-free registered apprenticeship education for the highest-skilled trade workforce to build and maintain the country’s infrastructure.

North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) bring these pieces together and are thriving. In 2018 alone, our unions gained more than 70,000 active new members, with a net gain of 375,000 active members since the last recession.

Today, large energy infrastructure projects are vital to sustainable job growth for our members and, by extension, our industry partners. These relationships help promote economic development and public safety in communities across the United States. But what happens when these opportunities are threatened by politics and outside special interests? That’s exactly the situation our nation’s critical energy infrastructure, and particularly pipelines, are in.

A prime example is the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) – a 600-mile natural gas pipeline that was bringing jobs, local tax income and, above all, economic opportunity for rural communities surrounding the project that otherwise have few job creation options.

Earlier this year, NABTU and other unions involved in the project swiftly lost around 4,500 jobs after construction on the ACP came to a halt due to a decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals questioning the pipeline’s crossing of the Appalachian Trail. The court vacated a decision from the U.S. Forest Service that would allow the pipeline to safely cross hundreds of feet beneath the Appalachian Trail. This decision came after the project already passed through an extensive, four-year environmental review dating back to the Obama Administration. In fact, the ACP already granted necessary rights-of-way by the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture. Additionally, more than 50 pipelines are built and operating across the Appalachian Trail for decades now.

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Is Your Employer Stealing From You?

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Millions of workers lose billions in stolen wages every year-nearly as much as all other property theft.

By Michael Hill, Correspondent
November 8, 2019, 3PM EST

Since assuming office in Philadelphia last year, Larry Krasner has earned a national reputation as a radical new kind of district attorney. He’s pushed the sort of criminal justice reform that typically comes from activists or public defenders, like ordering prosecutors to stop pursuing criminal charges for marijuana possession, or directing them to no longer seek cash bail for low-level offenses. Last October, he took another bold step: He created a task force focused on crimes against workers.

One of the primary crimes this task force will focus on is wage theft. At the absolute simplest, wage theft is as it sounds-a worker doesn’t get fully paid for the work they’ve done. Often employers pull this off by paying for less than the number of hours worked, not paying for legally required overtime, or stealing tips. That’s money that workers are legally entitled to and that their bosses find some way of pocketing.

Wage theft isn’t one of the crimes most prosecutors and politicians refer to when they talk about getting “tough on crime,” but it represents a massive chunk of all theft committed in the U.S. A 2017 study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that in the ten most populous states, an estimated 2.4 million people lose a combined $8 billion in income every year to theft by their employers. That’s nearly half as much as all other property theft combined last year-$16.4 billion according to the FBI. And again, EPI’s findings are only for ten states. According to the institute, the typical worker victimized by minimum-wage violations is underpaid by $64 per week, totaling $3,300 per year. If its figures are representative of a national phenomenon, then EPI estimates that the yearly total for American wage theft is closer to $15 billion.

There are some overt ways that employers rob their workers, like taking money directly out of their paychecks, but wage theft can take more complicated and subtler forms. Deliberately mislabeling workers as independent contractors in order to avoid paying higher wages for the same responsibilities as regular employees, for example, or asking employees to work while off the clock, or denying meal breaks, all technically fall under wage theft. Amazon, for instance, is currently being sued for not paying its employees for the amount of time they spend going through lengthy security checkpoints when they arrive at and leave work. It’s hard to mount civil lawsuits against employers who violate minimum-wage laws, because typically the victims of these crimes don’t have the time or resources to fight for their lost wages. And last year’s Supreme Court decision in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, which ruled that it’s legal to require employees to sign away their rights to join class-action lawsuits, makes going after employers for wage theft much more difficult.

As author Kim Bobo explains in her book Wage Theft in America, the people affected by wage theft are spread across a wide variety of industries, working in construction, nursing homes, garment factories, farms, poultry-processing plants, restaurants, landscaping, and more. But more professional workers are at risk, too, like nurses, pharmaceutical sales reps, and financial advisers. Freelancers are also especially susceptible. A 2018 report by Good Jobs First found that the overwhelming majority of companies caught committing wage theft are “the giant companies included in the Fortune 500, the Fortune Global 500 and the Forbes list of the largest privately held firms.” That includes Walmart, FedEx, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and State Farm Insurance.

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HUD ISSUES REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ON ELIMINATING REGULATORY BARRIERS TO AFFORDABLE HOUSING

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HUD No. 19-171
HUD Public Affairs
(202) 708-0685
Tuesday, November 26, 2019

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today published a Request for Information (RFI) seeking public comment on Federal, State, local, and Tribal laws, regulations, land use requirements, and administrative practices that artificially raise the costs of affordable housing development and contribute to shortages in America’s housing supply.

This RFI is a request for members of the public to share their knowledge and provide recommendations to HUD regarding regulations, and practices that unnecessarily impede housing supply and information on innovative practices that promote increased housing supply. Read the RFI here.

“Owning a home is an essential component of the American Dream. It is imperative that we remove regulatory barriers that prevent that dream from becoming a reality,” said HUD Secretary Ben Carson. “Through this request, communities across the country will have the opportunity to identify roadblocks to affordable housing and work with State, Federal, and local leaders to remove them.”

In this RFI, HUD is seeking information on the following:

-Specific HUD regulations, statutes, programs, and practices that directly or indirectly restrict the supply of housing or increase the cost of housing;
-Policy interventions, solutions, or strategies available to State, local, and Federal decision makers to incentivize State and local governments to review their regulatory environment or aid them in streamlining, reducing or eliminating the negative impact of State and local laws, regulations, and administrative practices;
-Ways that State-level laws, practices, and programs contribute to delays in the construction industry and specific laws, practices, and programs that could be reviewed;
-Common motivations or factors that underlie local governments’ adoption of laws, regulations, and practices that demonstrably raise the cost of housing development, and whether such factors vary geographically;
-Peer-reviewed research and/or representative surveys that provide quantitative analyses on the impact of regulations on the cost of affordable housing development;
-Performance measures, quantitative and/or qualitative, the Council should consider in assessing the reduction of barriers nationally or regionally and advantages and disadvantages of each measure; and
-Recommendations on how to best utilize HUD’s Regulatory Barriers Clearinghouse for States, local governments, researchers and policy analysts who are tracking reform activity across the country.

This RFI is a part of the work Secretary Carson is undertaking as the Chair of the White House Council on Eliminating Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing. The Council’s eight Federal member agencies are engaging with governments at all levels-State, local, and tribal-and other private-sector stakeholders on ways to increase the housing supply so more Americans have access to affordable housing.

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Executive Order on Improving Federal Contractor Operations by Revoking Executive Order 13495

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AlasBy the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act, 40 U.S.C. 101 et seq., and in order to promote economy and efficiency in Federal Government procurement, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Revocation of Prior Order. Executive Order 13495 of January 30, 2009 (Nondisplacement of Qualified Workers Under Service Contracts), which requires that successor Federal contractors in certain circumstances offer a right of first refusal of employment to employees employed under the predecessor contract, is hereby revoked.

Sec. 2. Agency Implementation. The Secretary of Labor (Secretary), the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council, and heads of executive departments and agencies shall, consistent with law, promptly move to rescind any orders, rules, regulations, guidelines, programs, or policies implementing or enforcing Executive Order 13495.

Sec. 3. Enforcement. The Secretary shall terminate, effective immediately, any investigations or compliance actions based on Executive Order 13495.

Sec. 4. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department, agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,
October 31, 2019.

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