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Nearly $16M in wages, benefits recovered for more than 2,800 workers denied full pay by 62 subcontractors on federal project at New Jersey military base

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Agency: Wage and Hour Division
Date: January 29, 2024
Release Number: 23-2598-NAT

A widespread investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor has recovered nearly $16 million in back wages and restored over 24,700 paid sick leave hours to leave banks for more than 2,800 workers denied their full wages and benefits by 62 subcontractors hired to construct temporary housing and provide services to Afghan refugees at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.

After 75 investigations that included Jupiter, Florida-based Disaster Management Group LLC, one of the project’s general contractors, and 61 subcontractors, the department’s Wage and Hour Division found DMG and its subcontractors violated federal law, including the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act, the Davis-Bacon Act, the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act and Executive Order 13706, by failing to:

Pay minimum prevailing wage rates to workers.
Pay fringe benefits.
Pay proper overtime.
Offer required paid sick leave under Executive Order 13706.
Properly classify workers as employees in their appropriate trades according to the work they performed.
Maintain required records, including segregating any benefits that may have been paid from wages.
Provide required notices to workers informing them of their rights under federal law.

The division found DMG liable for its own violations of federal law as well as for violations committed by its subcontractors for work performed at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. Managed by the Department of Defense, the project involved contractors from 17 states and Puerto Rico tasked with building temporary housing and coordinating delivery of medical, food and translation services as part of Operation Allies Refuge and Operation Allies Welcome to resettle Afghan refugees. The project began in July 2021 and was completed in February 2022.

In addition to paying the back wages and fringe benefits, DMG signed an enhanced compliance agreement with the department that requires it to develop and follow strategies to prevent, detect and resolve potential non-compliance by, among other things:

Creating a written prevailing wage compliance manual to include employees’ federal protections.
Vetting potential subcontractors’ ability to perform work in compliance with prevailing wage laws.
Monitoring itself and its subcontractors proactively by periodically conducting confidential employee interviews, reviewing basic and certified records, analyzing the use of classifications related to the work performed, verifying fringe benefit payments and maintaining a list of all employees of all subcontractors on any covered contracts.
Requiring subcontractors to certify compliance on all prevailing wage projects.
Verifying that the agency has incorporated the correct labor clauses and wage determinations.

“Every worker deserves to be paid the full wages to which they are entitled, and this compliance agreement, which recovers millions in wages for hundreds of workers, should serve as notice to other government contractors that the department will utilize its full power to enforce vigorously federal wage laws,” said Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda.

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Infrastructure Investment Must Create Good Jobs for All

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Center for American Progress
April 22, 2019 at 9:03 AM

Advancing a large-scale plan to rebuild America’s crumbling roads and bridges is at the top of many federal lawmakers’ 2019 agenda…

Equally important, lawmakers must ensure that any major infrastructure investment also helps secure the nation’s long-term prosperity. This means that the jobs supported by the plan must pay fair wages, provide good benefits and a voice on the job, and offer American workers from all walks of life a pathway to the middle class.

Over the past century, pro-worker lawmakers have sought to uphold the basic guarantee that government spending will create good jobs. This has been accomplished through a variety of measures-such as prevailing-wage and benefits laws that ensure workers receive fair compensation, as well as protections to prevent discrimination, support equal pay, and ensure that workers are able to exercise their right to form unions. Yet it is far from guaranteed that the jobs created through the infrastructure plan will be good ones.

…

Without adequate job quality protections, jobs funded through any new infrastructure investments could be of low quality, pay substandard wages, provide too few opportunities for advancement-particularly for women, people of color, and other historically disadvantaged communities-and do little to correct the decades long problem of stagnating U.S. wages.

Weak job standards not only harm American workers but also put responsible businesses that pay fair wages and respect employees at a competitive disadvantage. Moreover, research finds that when corporations receiving government contracts pay poverty wages or violate workplace laws, they often deliver poor-quality products to taxpayers and require taxpayers to bear hidden costs through federal and state governments’ provision of services to supplement workers’ incomes, such as Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and refundable tax credits.

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GOVERNOR SIGNS AG BILL BLOCKING WAGE CHEATS FROM RECEIVING GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
May 8 2017

OLYMPIA – The governor today signed into law Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s bipartisan legislation prohibiting businesses that have willfully violated state wage theft laws from being awarded government contracts.

Senate Bill 5301 bars companies from receiving both state and local contracts if a judge determines they willfully violated state wage theft laws. The measure, sponsored by Sen. Mark Miloscia, R-Auburn, passed the Senate overwhelmingly in February by 46-3 vote. It passed the House by a 63-33 margin in April. The companion measure, House Bill 1936, was sponsored by Rep. Zack Hudgins, D-Tukwila.

“We need to send a message that the state will not do business with those who cheat hard-working Washingtonians,” Ferguson said. “Government contracts – and taxpayer dollars – should only go to companies that play by the rules.”

The Washington state government spends more than $1 billion annually to buy goods and services – and the state spends billions more on public works contracts – but currently, companies that receive contracts from state and local governments are not always required to demonstrate compliance with wage laws.

“The state should not be supporting businesses that are taking hard-earned dollars from the state’s workers,” said Sen. Miloscia, chair of the Senate State Government Committee. “This change will affirm the state’s commitment to protecting workers and reward businesses who respect the law and take care of their employees.”

“We must stand up in Olympia and say, ‘You will not profit from cheating workers,’ ” Rep. Hudgins said. “This simple change will provide an important incentive for companies to follow the law.”

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What Records Must Be Provided to the Department of Labor?

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

From restaurants in New York to childcare providers in Arkansas to the garment industry in Southern California, Department of Labor investigators continue to uncover FLSA violations by conducting unannounced workplace inspections.

Section 11(a) of the FLSA specifically authorizes representatives of the Department of Labor to investigate and gather data concerning wages, hours, and other employment practices:

The inspector may review documents showing the employer’s annual dollar volume of business transactions, involvement in interstate commerce, and/or work on government contracts.  Those documents are inspected to determine if the employer is a covered enterprise under the FLSA, or if the employees are protected by the FLSA because their work involves them in interstate commerce.

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