Rep. Christine Chandler Champions Fair Wages Bill To Prevent Wage Theft … Now Heads To House Floor (NM)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Submitted by Carol A. Clark on February 23, 2019 – 8:34am

SANTA FE – The House Judiciary Committee passed Rep. Christine Chandler’s (D-Los Alamos) bill Friday to champion fair wages and benefits for workers. House Bill 246, regarding the Prevailing Wage, protects workers adversely affected by wage theft.

House Bill 246 ensures that New Mexicans are paid a fair wage for a hard day’s work by closing loopholes, providing a complaint resolution process, and increases penalties for violations. Addressing these issues in the Prevailing Wage law will keep jobs local, workplaces safe, and ensure quality workmanship in public projects.

Specifically, the bill makes certain that all employees working on public works projects are compensated fully. The bill also provides a process for workers to initiate prevailing wage complaints, and a mechanism for complaint resolution. House Bill 246 also increases penalties for those who do not properly compensate workers according to the Public Works Minimum Wage Act.

“Wage theft and treating workers unfairly undermines New Mexico’s economy. This legislation protects workers from exploitation and ensures they receive their hard-earned paychecks,” Rep. Chandler said. “Wage theft runs contrary to our values as New Mexicans, and I am proud to see this legislation move forward for working families.”

House Bill 246 now heads to the House floor.

(See Article)

Construction industry, unions duel over state prevailing wage bill (NH)

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NH Senate measure targets all state public works projects

BY BOB SANDERS – Published: February 13, 2019

A measure under consideration in the NH Senate would require contractors on state public works projects to pay the prevailing wage to workers, but it’s not the wages – it’s the benefits and paperwork that concerned several New Hampshire contractors speaking at a hearing Tuesday before the NH Senate Commerce Committee.

Several trade union representatives at the hearing countered that Senate Bill 271 is really not aimed at local contractors, but those outside New Hampshire, drawn here because it is the only New England state without prevailing wage requirements. (Some 24 states don’t have such laws, although the closest one to New Hampshire without one is in Virginia)

“At the end of the day, tax dollars of Granite Staters should go to local workers and local companies,” said Sen. Dan Feltes, D-Concord, the bill’s prime sponsor.

Feltes cited a 2016 study about the benefits of a prevailing wage: At least $300 million in economic activity resulting in some 1,700 jobs and tax revenues of 7.3 percent.

…

But union representatives said that the lack of a prevailing wage makes New Hampshire a magnet for out-of-state contractors that do pay both lower wages and benefits, often using undocumented immigrant labor, “and it undercuts our local contractors,” said Denis R. Beaudoin, business manager of IBEW Local 490, the electricians’ union. The construction industry has only replaced 2,000 of the 9,000 jobs it lost during the recession, he said, adding: “How can we justify the work going out of state?”
And while contractors testified that they offer health benefits, they don’t match other union benefits, like an apprentice program, said David Pelletier, business manager of UA Local 131, the plumbers and pipefitters union.

“Unions do provide more benefits than open shops,” acknowledged Abbott. One business did back the prevailing wage bill: American Income Life, a Londonderry insurance firm.

Kris Thieme, an agent from the company, countered contractors’ claim that a prevailing wage would drive up construction costs. He said soft costs, like engineering and architecture, were a bigger factor than labor. Besides, he said, if workers don’t have good benefits or wages, they would be more likely to receive state subsidies for healthcare, which would be passed on to taxpayers.

SB 271 would only apply to state projects, not municipal or school construction jobs, but the NH Municipal Association was concerned that the language wasn’t clear enough on that matter, since many local projects involved state funding.


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Attorney General James Announces Guilty Pleas of Valley Stream Construction Contractors for Failing to Pay Workers (NY)

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Vickram and Gayatri Mangru, Owners Of Vick Construction and AVM Construction Corp., Pleaded Guilty to Failure To Pay Prevailing Wages On Construction Work at Several New York City Public Schools.

BY LONG ISLAND NEWS & PR PUBLISHED: FEBRUARY 12 2019

New York, NY – February 12, 2019 – Attorney General Letitia James today announced the guilty pleas of Vickram Mangru, his wife Gayatri Mangru, and AVM Construction Corp., of Valley Stream, NY, for failing to pay proper prevailing wages to workers and falsifying business records related to a publicly-funded New York City construction project. The defendants were charged with failing to pay three workers their required prevailing and overtime wages, as well as supplemental benefits from December 2012 through February 2015. The defendants unlawfully falsified payroll records to conceal their crimes, and thereby stole more than $280,000 from three workers. In October 2017, a Bronx County Grand Jury returned an indictment charging the defendants with two counts of Failure to Pay Prevailing Wages and Benefits and two counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree.

“Intentionally underpaying workers is both highly illegal and immoral,” said Attorney General Letitia James. “Not only did the defendants take advantage of innocent workers trying to earn a living, they also took advantage of New York City by falsifying records to the Department of Education. This office will never hesitate to investigate any employer who tries to cheat our workers or our government.” 

…   

In addition, all defendants will be barred from bidding on or being awarded any public works contract in the State of New York for a period of five (5) years.    

“An honest days work deserves an honest days pay and when employers cheat workers from the wages they rightfully earned, regardless of their status,  it’s labor abuse at its worst,” said New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer. “Despite being debarred, this unscrupulous contractor attempted to use his wife’s name to open a company and take advantage of immigrant workers by withholding their prevailing wages yet again – now he is facing the consequences of his actions. I would like to thank the Attorney General for working side by side with my office to prosecute this contractor and bring justice to the workers who are owed their fair share.” 


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Could Gov. Newsom’s ambitious housing goals be sidelined by a worker shortage? (CA)

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Labor think tank says California would need at least 200,000 new construction workers

By LEONARDO CASTAÑEDA
PUBLISHED: January 14, 2019

Gov. Gavin Newsom has said he wants to build as many as 3.5 million new houses by 2025 to solve California’s housing crisis.

But those ambitious goals could be derailed without hundreds of thousands of new construction workers needed to dramatically accelerate the pace of California home building, even assuming that cities agree to zone for more housing and there’s money available to build it all. And it’s hard to imagine, given recent trends, where that many additional workers in the low-wage, high-risk industry would come from.

Newsom took an early stab at the money question in his first budget, offering $500 million in state funding for middle-income housing, But he wants California’s companies to take on a bigger role funding new homes. And he said he’s already talked with some Silicon Valley tech companies who are open to cooperating.

Ramping up housing construction from about 100,000 units in 2016 to 1980s levels – about 300,000 new homes were built in 1986 – would require some 200,000 new workers, according to the researcher behind a new study for Smart Cities Prevail, a pro-union nonprofit. But even that influx of workers wouldn’t be enough to meet the goal of 500,000 new houses a year that Newsom floated during his campaign.

“Workers are not going to fall out of trees,” researcher Scott Littlehale said.

Littlehale’s study found that California housing construction isn’t just failing to attract new workers. It’s losing the workers it already has, many of whom are low wage and lower-skilled.

From 2006 to 2017, California lost about 200,000 construction workers. And within the construction trade, many workers are opting for commercial building jobs, which pay more, have better benefits and steadier work.

During the boom building years, the construction industry was “dependent on young workers without a college degree and on immigrant workers,” Littlehale said. Today, both populations are on the decline.

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(View PDF of Study – Rebuilding California: The Golden State’s Housing Workforce Reckoning)

Prevailing wage and collective bargaining boost labor market competitiveness and productivity

  • The housing industry currently lacks the wage competitiveness and career training pipeline needed to offset the physical and economic risks of construction. This is hindering its ability to attract and retain the workers needed to increase production of new units.
  • Prevailing Wage standards and collective bargaining agreements are consistently associated with higher wages, increased apprenticeship enrollment, more production efficiency, and fewer workplace safety problems.
  • Most peer reviewed studies have concluded prevailing wage has no significant effect on overall project costs.

Housing builders’ reservoir of low-wage, less-skilled labor is not refilling itself. Background regulations that promote labor-management cooperation around the vital elements of skilled construction workforce development can play a vital role in restoring California residential building to the production engine that it once was.

(Executive Summary)

(Rebuilding California – Video)

Council bill aims to impose prevailing wage on all city-subsidized projects (NY)

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Wage and safety bills would incentivize union labor, but critics fear higher price tag.

By JEFF COLTIN
JANUARY 8, 2019

New York City Councilman Ben Kallos is reintroducing a stalled bill that would require all construction workers to get paid the prevailing wage on any projects getting city subsidies.

Under state law, any project built under a government contract must pay workers the prevailing wage. Kallos’ bill would cast a much wider net, mandating the prevailing wage for not just direct government contracts, but for any projects getting grants, bond financing, tax abatements or any other sort of support valued over $1 million from the New York City government.

“The same rules should apply when the city is doing the work directly or when they’re subsidizing somebody else to do the work,” the Manhattan lawmaker told City & State.

…

Critics like the Real Estate Board of New York, which represents developers, have spent heavily in the past to oppose efforts to expand the prevailing wage requirements, claiming higher labor costs would discourage private developers from building affordable housing.

Kallos countered that paying workers less than prevailing wage actually makes the affordable housing crisis worse by creating demand for housing at deeper levels of affordability.

“I’m disappointed to learn even the construction workers can’t afford the affordable housing that they are building,” he said.

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Calif. Prevailing Wage Law Applied to Recycling Plant Employees (CA)

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By Joanne Deschenaux
January 4, 2019

California’s prevailing wage law requires that all workers employed on “public works”-generally, construction projects-be paid at least as much as is generally paid for the performance of similar work in the same geographic area. A California appellate court has ruled that this law was not limited to construction projects and applied to workers who sorted recyclable materials at two publicly owned and operated recycling facilities.

The plaintiffs, who worked as sorters, sued a staffing company that provided employees to the two facilities under contracts with Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, alleging, among other claims, that the defendant had failed to pay them the prevailing wage.

The trial court granted the staffing company’s motion to dismiss the prevailing wage claims, ruling that the work done by the plaintiffs did not come within the prevailing wage law’s definition of “public works” because it was not construction work. The plaintiffs appealed.

The appellate court reversed the trial court’s decision. One provision of the prevailing wage law defines public works as “construction, alteration, demolition, installation or repair work done under contract and paid for in whole or in part out of public funds.” But this is not the only definition in the statute, the court said.

Another provision further defines public works as work done for “irrigation, utility, reclamation, and improvement districts, and other districts of this type.” The recyclable sorting work here was done for a county sanitation district, and so the work at issue fell within this second statutory definition and the plaintiffs were entitled to receive the prevailing wage, the court said.

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(PDF Copy of Decision)

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Singleton Bill to Help Strengthen Prevailing Wage Clears Senate (NJ)

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December 17, 2018, 5:42 pm

TRENTON – Legislation sponsored by Senator Troy Singleton, which would allow the issuing of stop-work orders for failure to pay the prevailing wage, cleared the Senate today.

“Before all else, we must protect the rights of the men and women who are working hard each and every day to earn a decent and fair living,” said Senator Singleton (D-Burlington). “New Jersey has set a high standard for how we treat our workers, and if you contract with the state on public works projects, you must be prepared to abide by that standard.”

The bill, S-2557, would permit the Commissioner of the Department of Labor and Workforce Development to issue a stop-work order against an employer upon determining an employer has paid a worker less than the prevailing wage.

The stop-work order would apply to every site where the violation continues to occur. It could only be lifted by the commissioner if the department finds the employer has agreed to pay future wages at the required rate, return any back-wages owed to workers and pay any penalty assessed by the department. The commissioner may also require the employer to file periodic reports for two years certifying its compliance with the prevailing wage law as a condition of lifting the order.

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(View PDF Copy of Bill)

Developers Would Provide Construction Workers with Prevailing Wage and Benefits on Government Subsidized Projects under Legislation Proposed by Council Member Ben Kallos (NY)

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Wednesday, January 9, 2019

New York, NY – Affordable housing and economic development projects receiving city subsidies would be required to pay workers a prevailing wage and provide training in the classroom and on the job through apprenticeship coupled with transparency, under legislation introduced by Council Member Ben Kallos.

Construction-related injuries and deaths continued to rise for the fifth straight year to 744 injuries and 16 deaths in fiscal year 2018, approximately triple the 212 injuries and 6 deaths in fiscal year 2014 according to the Mayor’s Management Report, as reported by City and State. Over the past fiscal year, when incidents further increased by 20%, Local Law 78 of 2017 authored by Council Member Ben Kallos was implemented forcing developers to report of construction-related injuries and fatalities with new minimum fines of $2,500 for failure to report. The Local Law 78 reports have been available on a monthly basis since June 2018 from the DOB.

In 2018, a construction worker earning the minimum wage of $11.10 an hour, working full time for 35 hours a week for 52 weeks, could only bring home $20,202 a year. This year’s increase to $15 an hour in New York City would increase this to $27,300 a year. Construction workers earning the minimum wage while building affordable housing would need access to units set at 30% of Area Median Income (AMI) deemed as extremely Low-Income, the lowest band possible. While construction workers on many affordable projects earn the minimum wage, many affordable housing projects do not even offer affordable housing at such extremely low-income, only making the crisis worse.

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The need for Prevailing Wage (DE)

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PUBLISHED NOV 27, 2018 AT 3:38 PM

The basic reason why the prevailing wage was created was to help local contractors to compete with out-of-state contractors, paying a lower rate. The same people complaining about the prevailing wage would also be complaining about immigrant labor coming into a county for those jobs. If you visit Columbus Avenue in Palisades Park or areas of Dover, you would see immigrants getting picked up for Construction jobs! Are they properly trained? No, I have created apprenticeships following tenets of the National Bureau of Apprenticeship Training, and I know what is needed for a 4- or 5-year program!

The rates or wages for prevailing wages are developed by surveying contractors and unions to determine the wages for each classification (Source: William Winkler)! Some of the variables looked at are the wages in the largest city in a county, viewing the majority wage! If more than one-half of all the workers reported in that city are at a certain wage than that is the majority wage rate and that wage rate becomes the rate for the whole county.

If there is not a majority wage, as listed above, then a weighted wage is computed using data from the largest city in the county, and that becomes the prevailing wage. If no hours are reported in a county’s largest city then a wage is computed for the county, and that becomes the Prevailing wage, and finally, if no data is reported for the entire county, and that county’s old Prevailing Wage remains in effect. This has been the process, since 1931, and earlier in an historical context.

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Iowa MPOs Should Opt-Out of “Federal-Aid SWAP” Program (IA)

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PUBLISHED NOV 27, 2018 AT 3:38 PM

In 2017, the Iowa General Assembly passed legislation that authorized the Iowa Department of Transportation to create a “Federal-Aid SWAP” program (Iowa DOT, 2018). This legislation essentially eliminated federal requirements on public infrastructure projects, including the historically bipartisan Federal Davis-Bacon Act which creates a level playing field for all federal construction contractors by ensuring that public expenditures maintain and reflect local area standards for wages and benefits. Under Iowa’s “Federal-Aid SWAP” program, federal dollars that were designated for local construction projects are now retained through the state and fail to include Davis-Bacon Act standards. Local metro planning organizations in Iowa should opt-out of participating in the program.

The main purpose of the Davis-Bacon Act is to support middle-class American families by protecting local standards for compensation and craftsmanship in the competitive public bidding process. Federal construction bidding is not like the private sector. Government procurement agents are required to select the lowest bidder. In the low-bid model used on federally-funded construction projects, contractors aim to lower their bid however possible, including by lowering wages and by reducing apprenticeship training. The Davis-Bacon Act levels the playing field, allowing local contractors and local workers a fair shot at these government projects and incentivizing competition based on core competencies in construction (Duncan et al., 2017).

The Davis-Bacon Act boosts local economies and provides great value to taxpayers. The Davis-Bacon Act protects work for local contractors and construction workers, supports training programs, and provides pathways into the middle class for all blue-collar workers– keeping them off government assistance programs. Local metro planning organizations in Iowa should opt-out of participating in the “Federal-Aid SWAP” program and instead choose to maintain Davis-Bacon Act standards on taxpayer-funded construction projects.

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