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US Department of Labor Obtains Court Order Preventing Federal Contractor from Retaliating Against, Intimidating Workers on Maryland Projects

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Agency: Wage and Hour Division
Date: August 23, 2022
Release Number: 22-1722-PHI

JAG Contractors Inc. attempted to obstruct federal wage investigation

ALEXANDRIA, VA – The U.S. Department of Labor obtained a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to prohibit a federal contractor and its owners from retaliating against former and current employees who cooperate with an investigation by the department’s Wage and Hour Division.

The division’s probe of the pay practices of JAG Contractors Inc. in Alexandria, and owner Jose Guzman began in February 2022. The company was contracted to build two federally funded projects in Maryland: the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research at Fort Detrick in Frederick, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services site in Windsor Mill.

Investigators determined the company and its owners failed to pay workers on the projects all wages as required for all hours worked in violation of the Davis-Bacon Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. They also learned that JAG either terminated or reassigned employees who complained to the employer’s management about their illegal pay practices or who cooperated with the investigation, from working on the company’s federal projects.

In addition, investigators discovered JAG attempted to obstruct the investigation by falsifying documents, making intimidating statements about workers’ immigration status, and directing employees not to report to work on the day investigators interviewed employees.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the department’s suit against JAG Contractors Inc. and its owner seeks an order that permanently prevents them from violating the FLSA’s anti-retaliation provisions or engaging in other activity protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act.

“Workers have the legal right to question their employer’s pay practices, submit a complaint and to take part in a federal investigation without fear of reprisal,” explained Wage and Hour Division District Director Alfonso J. Gristina in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. “When there are doubts about an employer’s compliance with federal wage and hour laws, we will intervene to ensure that employers respect their workers and their rights.”

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USDOL’S Wage and Hour Division Announces Priority of Protecting Workers from Retaliation

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

March 16, 2022
JD Supra

On March 10, 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (which enforces the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act and other federal wage and hour laws) announced that one of its top enforcement priorities is to protect workers from retaliation for exercising their rights. The USDOL launched an anti-retaliation page on its web site and published a Field Assistance Bulletin on the subject of retaliation.

In the Field Assistance Bulletin, the USDOL reiterated that both internal complaints to an employer as well as external complaints to the Wage and Hour Division or to a court are protected activities. An employee is protected from retaliation even if the employee’s internal or external complaint is determined to be without merit. The penalties for unlawful retaliation can include reinstatement (if the employee was discharged), injunctive relief (such as removal of a disciplinary memo from the employee’s file), back pay and an amount equal to the back pay owed as liquidated damages

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Exposing Wage Theft Without Fear: States Must Protect Workers from Retaliation

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

NELP
June 24, 2019

Around the country, workers who speak up about workplace violations often face a significant risk of retaliation by their employer. Yet our laws generally place the burden on workers to come forward and report violations, either through complaints filed with enforcement agencies or through lawsuits filed in state or federal court. Government investigations or audits of employers are relatively rare. Retaliation is therefore one of the most pressing and persistent challenges to effective enforcement of our workplace laws-workers should not fear that their employer will punish them for asserting their rights. Ultimately, any law intending to protect workers’ rights must protect workers from retaliation in order to make that law a reality.

Why Do Workers Experience Retaliation?

  • Workers in the U.S. generally bear the burden of enforcing their own labor protections-it is up to them to come forward to report violations.
  • When a worker comes forward to report a workplace violation, we know that employers often retaliate or threaten to retaliate against the worker.
  • ·Under our current system, workers bear the entire risk of retaliation from their employer when they report violations.

What Does Retaliation Look Like?

  • Retaliation takes many shapes and can be difficult to pinpoint or prove. Employers, for example, may fire a worker, demote a worker, reduce a worker’s hours, change worker’s schedule to a less favorable one, subject a worker to new forms of harassment, unfairly discipline a worker, threaten to report a worker or a worker’s family member to immigration authorities, and much more.

What Does Retaliation Cost Workers?

  • When workers experience retaliation for trying to protect their rights, the costs can quickly escalate from both a financial and emotional standpoint, especially for the countless workers nationwide who live paycheck to paycheck. A worker may experience lost pay, for example, which can quickly lead to missed payments, lower credit scores, eviction, repossession of a car or other property, suspension of a license, inability to pay child support or taxes, attorney’s fees and costs, stress, trauma, and more.

Seattle worker-rights groups uniting to create ‘one-stop shop’ for workplace wrongs (WA)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By: Benjamin Romano
August 3, 2018

Working Washington and the Fair Work Center, two organizations that have been as effective as any in recent years at expanding and defending the rights of workers in Seattle and beyond, are joining forces under a new executive director.

Rachel Lauter, most recently the deputy chief of staff to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, assumed the role of leading both organizations in late May, a first step in a merger designed to create what she describes as “a one-stop shop for worker organizing, advocacy, outreach and education and legal services.”

That’s necessary, she said, because aggrieved workers or those looking to improve working conditions may not always know what kind of help they need or where to begin.

Working Washington got its start in 2011 organizing low-wage workers to push for the nation’s first $15-an-hour minimum wage, passed by SeaTac voters in 2013, and then by the Seattle City Council in 2014. The labor-backed group has run successful campaigns – often marked by attention-grabbing stunts and protests, online and off – for predictable shift scheduling, expanded sick leave, equal treatment and, most recently, expanded protections for domestic workers.

The Fair Work Center (FWC), meanwhile, formed in 2016 with a mission of educating workers about their rights in Seattle and beyond, offering legal aid and connections to groups advocating for specific communities such as immigrants and youth. It has been awarded more than $2.5 million from the city of Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards under a grant program designed to “develop awareness and understanding of worker rights, and facilitate resolution of labor standards violations.” According to its 2017 annual report, the legal clinic helped low-wage workers recover more than $350,000 resulting from wage theft, discrimination and harassment, retaliation and other violations.

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GUEST COMMENTARY: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT WAGE THEFT

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Posted on February 19, 2018
By Melissa Wells

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Wage theft occurs when a worker performs a job for an agreed-upon wage, and after completing the job, does not receive the full wage they are entitled to. The Center for Popular Democracy estimates that 580,000 Maryland workers suffer from wage theft each year, for a total of $875 million in gross wages lost annually. These numbers may underestimate the scope of wage theft in Maryland, as our Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation has found that “employees often do not file a claim for a wage payment and collection law violation because they fear retaliation,” leaving us with an incomplete picture of wage theft’s prevalence. Low-wage workers are the most vulnerable to wage theft, particularly in industries like construction, food service and landscaping.

Workers are right to fear retaliation from their employers because Maryland law does not protect them from “discharge, demotion, discipline, or any other action that would reasonably deter an employee from engaging in protected activity under the state’s wage payment and protection law.” This means that though Maryland workers have a right to bring wage theft claims, they do not have a right against repercussions from their employer for bringing the claims.

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Businessman David Emami must pay workers more than $512K for ‘scheme’ to avoid paying overtime

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

U.S. Department of Labor       Date: February 2, 2015

Wage and Hour Division          Release Number: 15-13-SAN

 

PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal court has ordered local developer David Emami and three of his affiliated companies to pay 33 Portland-area employees $512,290 in unpaid wages and liquidated damages. The U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon agreed with a U.S. Department of Labor investigation that found that Emami and companies Oak Grove Cinemas Inc., Barrington Management LLC and Barrington Venture LLC willfully violated the overtime and record-keeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The court also held that Emami violated the anti-retaliation protections of the FLSA by threatening employees who cooperated with the department’s investigation.

“Those who flagrantly disregard basic wage obligations and then try to cover up those actions should think twice before threatening workers when they simply exercise their right to be paid fairly, as the law requires,” said Janet Herold, the department’s regional solicitor in San Francisco. “This judgment makes clear that we will not allow employers to violate the law and then try to bully their way out of trouble.”

The department concluded that those Emami employed as general maintenance, landscaping and construction workers at commercial properties he owned or maintained had two time cards for most pay periods. On one time card, an employee recorded their morning start time and a midafternoon end time. The employees immediately clocked in on a second time card to record the remainder of a day’s work hours. The workers’ duties and rates of pay remained the same each day at each work location.

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US Labor Department lawsuit alleges Wisconsin landscape service retaliated against 2 employees who filed complaint seeking overtime pay

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

U.S. Department of Labor   October 23, 2014
Wage and Hour Division

ARPIN, Wis. — The U.S. Department of Labor has sued Carl’s Landscape Service Inc. in Arpin, alleging that the company retaliated against two workers for contacting the department’s Wage and Hour Division with a complaint about unpaid overtime.

“The law prohibits employers from retaliating against any employee who files a complaint or cooperates in a Wage and Hour investigation,” said Theresa Walls, district director for the Wage and Hour Division in Minneapolis. “The Wage and Hour Division will not tolerate willful employee intimidation or coercion and will make use of every tool we have available to ensure that a fair investigation is conducted and workers are protected.”

After the company learned of the worker’s contact with the Wage and Hour Division, one employee was fired and the second was not called back following a seasonal layoff. A complaint has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin against the company and its owner, Darrell Kasner, seeking lost wages for the two employees and an injunction against future retaliation.

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