A.G. Schneiderman and Port Authority Inspector General Nestor Announce Arrest of JFK Contractor Charged With Cheating Construction Workers Out of Benefit Payments

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Arbor Concrete Corp. And Its Principal Kenneth Padover Allegedly Failed To Pay $268,055.78 In Benefits To Workers For A Construction Project At JFK Airport

March 31st 2016

NEW YORK – Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman and Michael Nestor, the Inspector General for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (“Port Authority”), announced the arrest of Kenneth Padover, the owner of Arbor Concrete Corp. Padover and his company face 136 felony counts of Offering a False Instrument for Filing and Falsifying Business Records and 3 misdemeanor counts of Failure to Pay Wages. Mr. Padover was arrested early this morning outside of his Dix Hills residence and is expected to be arraigned today at Queens County Criminal Courthouse. A felony complaint was filed today in court. Arbor Concrete Corp. and its principal Kenneth Padover allegedly failed to pay $268,055.78 in benefits to workers for a construction project at JFK Airport.

“My Office will not sit idly by when New York workers are cheated out of their health benefits, vacation pay and potential pension income,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “Government contractors who fail to pay the legally required wages or benefits must be held accountable and my office will continue to prosecute employers who do not pay workers everything they are lawfully owed.”

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LaGrange: ‘Prevailing wage’ laws need rigorous enforcement

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By: LIBN Staff
March 18, 2016

It was a successful and well-attended event and, other than the people who attended, no one knew it happened.

On March 8, 2016, hundreds attended a Public Works Symposium at the Huntington Hilton organized by Laborers Local 66 and Laborers-Employers Cooperation and Education Trust. In attendance were responsible builders and contractors, union officials, lawyers and government officials. New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and Nassau District Attorney Madeline Singas gave remarks as well as staff from Suffolk District Attorney Tom Spota’s office. The focal point of this all-day event was enforcing the prevailing wage.

Prevailing wages are the pay rates set by law for work on public work projects. This applies to all laborers, workers or mechanics employed under a public work contract. The Bureau of Public Works administers Articles 8 and 9 of the New York State Labor Laws where Article 8 covers public construction. First created by the Federal Davis-Bacon Act, all publicly funded construction contracts over a certain amount must pay workers on-site no less than the locally set prevailing wage. This standard was established to prevent public works projects from destabilizing the local construction industry and to advance workforce development as well as eliminate the age-old race to the bottom.

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NYC quadruples penalties, ramps up scrutiny of construction site safety violations

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By Emily Peiffer
February 12, 2016

Dive Brief:

  • New York City Maybor Bill de Blasio announced Friday the city will quadruple penalties for serious construction site safety violations, mandate new supervision at construction sites, and start a safety sweep of more than 1,500 work sites throughout New York.
  • The heightened focus on construction safety issues comes one week after a crane collapsed in New York City, killing one pedestrian and injuring three others. The incident, which is still under investigation, also resulted in de Blasio implementing a new, four-point construction crane safety plan.
  • The new safety provisions are included in a $120 million Department of Buildings effort to increase oversight at high-risk sites. Under the new measure, safety violation penalties will go from $2,400 to $10,000, and penalties for sites without a required construction superintendent will go from $5,000 to $25,000.

 

Wage-theft enforcement needs a shot in the arm

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Advocates push for a crackdown, but cite estimates based on a survey done five years ago

November 17, 2015
By Rosa Goldensohn

Despite a law meant to keep employers from underpaying workers, wage fraud is “pervasive” and requires more regulation, a new report argues.

The study cites 11 individual cases that have occurred in New York since the state law in 2010 to supports its assertion that additional reforms are needed.

But in an attempt to show the statewide scope of the problem, the report extrapolates data from a survey of workers by a workers-rights group in 2010, before a state law passed that year to prevent wage theft had any effect.

Roughly 2.1 million New Yorkers lose $3.2 billion to wage theft annually, including more than $1 billion last year from pay that is less than minimum wage, according to a report to be released Tuesday by the Center for Popular Democracy and based on the worker-advocacy group National Employment Law Project’s study five years ago. Just a fraction of the $23 million in underpayments to 12,700 workers in 2013 was returned, the new report said.

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NY Task Force to Combat Worker Exploitation Gets Boost

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October 16, 2015

NEW YORK – Gov. Andrew Cuomo this week announced new measures to advance the state’s Task Force to Combat Worker Exploitation, but advocates are concerned it may not be enough.

The measures include funding to coordinate outreach, investigations and prosecutions, and a new anti-retaliation unit for workers who stand up for their rights. According to Anita Halasz, executive director of Long Island Jobs with Justice, many of the workers who will benefit are immigrants.

“We definitely commend the governor for taking this very important step,” she said, “because, oftentimes, immigrant workers are working in the shadows and are unable to represent themselves.”

Worker advocates, however, are concerned that the additional $700,000 in funding is too little to address the problem of worker exploitation statewide.

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[New York] City Council wants to track bad building contractors to stop construction accidents

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BY GREG B. SMITH / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, May 11, 2015, 8:51 PM

With construction accidents on the rise, the City Council Monday pressed the Buildings Department to aggressively pursue “bad actor” contractors.

“People who are doing bad things are not being stopped,” Housing & Building Committee Chairman Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn) said. “We want to make sure we’re doing a lot more of connecting the dots.”

From 2013 to last year, the number of building permits rose 10% while the number of accidents jumped by 24%, Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler said at a housing committee hearing.

Hein signs construction apprenticeship law

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Saturday, March 14, 2015

 

 

KINGSTON – Ulster County Executive Michael Hein on Friday signed into law a new policy that requires contractors entering into contracts with the County of Ulster to have apprenticeship agreements for certain bridge contracts of over $500,000.

Contractors must have apprenticeship agreements appropriate to the type and scope of work to be performed and must be registered with and approved by the state Labor Department.

Hein said the law will “help ensure we have a well-trained generation of high skilled local tradesmen to tackle the monumental task of rebuilding infrastructure through the Hudson Valley.”

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Gov. Cuomo signs new legislation making it easier for workers and the state Labor Department to fight wage theft

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NEW YORK DAILY NEWS / Sunday, January 4, 2015, 2:00 AM 

It feels good to be able to write about something positive for New York workers in my first column of 2015. After all, measures that benefit them and rein in abuses by their bosses are as rare as snow in August.

It took a long time but on Monday Gov. Cuomo gave a last-minute Christmas gift to hundreds of thousands of low-wage laborers across the state by signing legislation making it easier for workers and the state Department of Labor to fight wage theft, which in New York has been an epidemic for many years.

“I am tired of waiting,” said Marcos Lino, who filed a complaint with the Department of Labor in 2008 after enduring four years of being shortchanged by his boss in a small Flushing grocery store. Six years have passed and his case is still unresolved.

Hopefully now Lino – and thousands more who, like him, have waited far too long to recover what is rightfully theirs – will finally get some justice.

“The groundbreaking legislation signed today will protect both workers from abuse, and law-abiding businesses from being undercut by employers who turn a profit by breaking the law,” said Andrew Friedman, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy.

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Enforcement Matters: Wage Violations, Workers and the Economy

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by Secretary Tom Perez on December 4, 2014

If you work hard and play by the rules, then you should be able to earn enough to take care of yourself and your family – that’s a core American value. But for too many people, their hard work isn’t reflected in their paychecks. In many cases, workers aren’t being fully and properly paid for all the hours they put in on the job. The Labor Department recently commissioned a research study on minimum wage violations in two states that demonstrates exactly that. But we are committed to using our enforcement tools to ensure workers get the wages that are rightfully theirs.

Using U.S. Census and earnings data from New York and California, this new study shows that many workers are earning a de facto minimum wage below the legal floor. Unscrupulous employers push their workers into poverty when they fail to pay what the law requires.

In those states, roughly 3 to 6 percent of all workers covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act experience minimum wage violations – translating into a total of between $20 and $29 million in lost weekly income. That represents 40 percent or more of their total pay. Imagine if 40 cents out of every dollar you earned didn’t show up in your paycheck but in your employer’s pocket. For every hour of tough, on-your-feet work looking after children, cleaning homes, making hotel beds, preparing food in a restaurant or picking crops in a field, it’s possible you could be working 24 minutes for free. That’s just wrong.

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(USDOL Study)

Suffolk DA Spota: “A theft of government funds, pure and simple”

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Published: 12/9/2014

 

 

Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota today announced the indictment and arraignment of a company president and her two adult children for a pair of separate criminal schemes; the overbilling of Islip town for Superstorm Sandy cleanup, and the submission of false payroll records to hide the firm’s non-compliance with state wage laws.

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(View PDF of News Release)