MASSACHUSETTS RECOVERS MILLIONS IN REVENUE BY REDUCING EMPLOYER FRAUD AND WORKER MISCLASSIFICATION

BOSTON – Thursday, September 5, 2013 – Labor and Workforce Development Secretary Joanne F. Goldstein today announced Massachusetts has recovered more than $21 million over an 18-month period in owed revenue recaptured through the collaborative work of the state’s Joint Enforcement Task Force on the Underground Economy and Employee Misclassification (the Joint Task Force). This recovered amount is greater than the sum of all previous years combined as detailed in the Joint Task Force’s 2012 Annual Report.

In March 2008, Governor Deval Patrick established the Joint Task Force to restore fairness to the Massachusetts economy by addressing employer fraud and misclassification. Working towards this goal, the Joint Task Force is composed of various state agencies including representatives from the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (EOLWD), as well as other executive branch agencies, the Office of the Attorney General’s Fair Labor Division, the Office of the Treasurer’s Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission and the Insurance Fraud Bureau.

American Waste Services workers locked in ‘wage-theft’ conflict

By KAREN LEE ZINER

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE – For six years, Enrique Sarceno worked on a garbage truck, emptying 30-gallon barrels on a municipal route in Franklin, Mass. At day’s end, Sarceno would strip off his rank-smelling clothes and head for the shower.

He thought the money was good – $17 an hour. But when the former American Waste Services company, in Raynham, hired him, Sarceno knew nothing of the Massachusetts prevailing wage law under which he would have been paid at least $5 more per hour.

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