Construction firms owe $1.1 million in back pay (IL)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

State decision on prevailing wage follows complaint by carpenters council.

By David Roeder
Feb 24, 2020

The Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters said Monday the developer and subcontractors that built a senior living center in Northbrook have been ordered to pay $1.1 million to employees for violating state law on prevailing wages and benefits.

The Illinois Department of Labor, responding to charges the council filed, ordered the back pay for employees who constructed the Lodge of Northbrook, a 164-unit facility at 2150 Founders Drive, Northbrook. The project benefited from bonds issued by the Illinois Finance Authority, making it subject to the state’s Prevailing Wage Act. …

Executive Secretary-Treasurer Gary Perinar of the carpenters council said the back pay award is the largest in its history. He said many workers will receive thousands of dollars paid out over a year.

“We have a new department dedicated to combating wage theft and are putting unscrupulous contractors on notice that cheating workers and taxpayers will not be tolerated,” he said. The council is a part owner of Sun-Times Media. …

“Wage theft and the loss of tax revenue affects everyone,” Perinar said. “It takes advantage of workers, many of whom are unaware of their right to receive fair wages and benefits for themselves and their families. It puts signatory union contractors at a disadvantage for competitively bid projects. And it cheats communities out of tax dollars to increase future growth, new projects and public services. Thanks to our research team for discovering this injustice and to the Department of Labor for enforcing the law.”

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Workers owed $105K in back pay on Las Vegas Strip bollards project (NV)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Shea Johnson
Las Vegas Review-Journal
December 6, 2019 – 5:30 pm

A Las Vegas construction company that installed bollards on the Strip owes more than $105,000 in wages to workers it underpaid and cannot hold a public works contract for three years, a state agency ruled.

Muller Construction must also pay $56,000 in administrative penalties after losing its appeal to the April decision by the Nevada Office of the Labor Commissioner, agency spokeswoman Teri Williams confirmed Friday.

The office’s ruling Wednesday followed an administrative hearing in October, where Muller Construction objected to the agency’s findings that it failed to pay prevailing wage to 28 workers.

Those workers fabricated bollards in the company’s work yard, which should have been deemed a public works site subject to prevailing wage, the agency said.

Muller Construction was awarded a $5 million county contract in June 2017 to install on the Strip hundreds of bollards, the four-foot steel posts rooted into sidewalks to protect pedestrians from vehicles.

Robert Kern, an attorney representing the company, said he believed evidence presented to the agency established the yard was used for multiple public and private projects, meaning it did not fit the definition of a public works site.

“I can’t quite grasp the logic of it,” he said about the decision.

Kern said he planned to appeal the decision to state court and seek to delay the ruling’s enforcement.

One worker was ordered to be paid more than $19,000, according to Tommy White, a laborers union leader and chairman of the Nevada Foundation for Fair Contracting. It’s the nonprofit labor management watchdog whose complaint to the agency sparked the investigation.

“It looks like it will be a nice Christmas for all those workers,” White said, adding they deserved the money to which they are entitled.

The company was originally ordered by the Office of the Labor Commissioner to pay more than $92,000 in back wages and $130,000 in penalties. But the decision was modified Wednesday, Williams said.

Muller Construction has accused Laborers Local 872, the union where White is business manager and secretary-treasurer, of defamation over the matter. The lawsuit filed in January 2018 in Clark County District Court remains unresolved, court records show.
The company had completed 10 other county public works projects since 2015 without a prevailing wage violation, according to the county.

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Workers on Digi-Key project paid back wages after violation (MN)

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By: Brian Johnson
October 1, 2019

At least three concrete workers on the $300 million Digi-Key expansion project in Thief River Falls have received thousands of dollars in back pay after a state agency found that a project subcontractor violated state wage laws.

In a Sept. 24 letter to concrete worker Franklin Flores, an investigator with the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry said Flores’ employer, Millennium Concrete, was “in violation of state labor standards and prevailing wage laws.”

Millennium owed back wages for work performed between April 1 and Dec. 1 of last year, according to the letter.

A laborers’ union official who assisted the employees confirmed to Finance & Commerce that three affected workers each received checks “in the $8,000 to $9,000 range” along with the letter from the department.

Illinois-based McShane Construction is the general contractor on the Digi-Key project.

“While McShane is not aware of the number of workers involved or amounts due them, we are pleased the wage issue is being resolved,” McShane President Jeff Raday said in an email. “We mandate that all of our subcontractors comply with all federal and state minimum wage requirements, including compliance with prevailing wage requirements on projects subject to the Davis-Bacon Act. We are committed to fair compensation for each and every worker on our job sites.”

The Minnesota and North Dakota chapter of the Laborers Union International of North America and others raised concerns about potential prevailing wage violations on the state-subsidized Digi-Key project last June.

“We were happy to finally see it in writing that there were prevailing wage violations. This isn’t just us speculating on it,” Kevin Pranis, the union’s marketing director, said in an interview Tuesday.

Flores and the two other workers, Jairo Cruz and Walter Torres, filed a complaint with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights last week. The complaint alleged the workers suffered discrimination and mistreatment while working on the Digi-Key project.

Cummins & Cummins, a Minneapolis-based law firm, is representing the workers in the human rights claim.

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Bonney Lake contractor fined for underpaying workers on public school projects (WA)

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by KOMO Staff
Tuesday, October 10th 2017

OLYMPIA, Wash. – A Bonney Lake contractor was fined $218,000 and ordered to pay out $210,000 in back wages after an investigation found it shorted employees for work on 10 public school construction projects, the state Department of Labor & Industries reports.

The company, I&C Northwest of Bonney Lake, and owner Jim Lingnaw, were cited for the unpaid regular wages and overtime, and for false reporting. The company owes also faces a prohibition from bidding on any public works projects.

The back pay was owed to nine who worked for I&C Northwest on the public school projects.

Jim Christensen, prevailing wage program manager for L&I, said the citations are based on the contractor’s continued violations of state law after the agency educated the firm on requirements for public contracts. The agency warned Lingnaw in January 2016 about receiving fines and disbarment after L&I uncovered the same violations on five other projects.

Investigations involving the company go back to at least 2014, said L&I spokesman Matthew Erlich.

“This case represents examples of repeated violations of the law,” said Christensen, who has more than a decade of experience handling prevailing wage issues. “Our investigation showed I&C falsified pay documents and shorted the workers on each project. This goes beyond a simple, honest mistake.”

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Back pay a boon for Tyler Middle School workers

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on
December 20, 2015
by Ryan Murphy 

 

 

Randy Tong worked for about a year with Comfort Systems, a heating and cooling subcontractor, to help build the Georgie D. Tyler Middle School in Windsor.

Two years later, he finally got paid.

Tong and hundreds of other workers who were underpaid while working on the Tyler Middle construction job have finally received checks for back pay ordered as a result of a Department of Labor investigation — although some still have complaints about how much they got and how the process was handled.

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