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Following Hard Rock collapse, council and Mayor begin work on ‘responsible bidders ordinance’ (LA)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Michael Isaac Stein
24th February 2020

A New Orleans City Council committee on February 12, heard presentations from labor union leaders, officials with the Louisiana Workforce Commission and other labor advocates about a proposal for the city to pass a “responsible bidders ordinance” in order to hold current and prospective city contractors accountable for the treatment and safety of their employees.

While the details have yet to be worked out, proponents of such an ordinance called for a requirement that companies seeking city work disclose past safety violations and labor complaints as part of their bids.

Public calls for such an ordinance have grown in the months following the October collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel on Canal Street. The incident killed three workers and injured over a dozen more.

Labor advocates told the council’s Economic Development & Special Development Projects Committee on Wednesday that such a disaster was inevitable given the current climate of construction contracting in the city. They argued that public bid laws that apply to construction contracts, which require the city to choose the firm offering the lowest price, drive companies to cut costs wherever possible to the detriment of their employees.

“This has been going on for a really long time,” said Chip Fleetwood, director of business development for the local chapter of the Painters and Allied Trades International Union. “We’re to a point where it’s almost like the wild, wild west. It was only a matter of time before something like that happened. In the building trade’s opinion, we knew there was going to be a breaking point. And we’re at the breaking point now. If something isn’t done, if we don’t really hold contractor’s accountable, it’s going to happen again.” …

Erika Zucker, policy advocate at the Workplace Justice Project at the Loyola College of Law, argued that transparency, monitoring and enforcement should all be part of the equation. She said that major changes should be made to how the city considers and chooses contractors. Instead of just relying on the lowest quote, she said that contractors should have to disclose much more info, such as past labor law and safety violations.
She also said the city should create a fair contracting task force to implement and enforce the new rules.

The Hard Rock Hotel was a private development, not a public one, so the city wasn’t party to the construction contracts. Even so, Zucker argued that a responsible bidders ordinance would still have an effect on private developments.

“The city becomes overall the most responsible contracting entity and sets an example for the region,” she said.

Zucker also argued that the ordinance should be applied to any project that are either “wholly public projects or projects that use public money that looks more like a public-private partnership, which can look like anything from a tax incentive to joint operation.”

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San Francisco to expand background checks on contractors after deadly tunnel accident (CA)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Kim Slowey
Aug. 22, 2018

Dive Brief:

  • San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency officials have promised, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, that they will make background checks into contractors that want to do business with the city more robust following the death of a signal technician employed by Shimmick Construction who had been working on the $40.9 million Twin Peaks Tunnel Improvement project. The agency awarded the contract for the project to the Shimmick/Con-Quest Joint Venture in February.
  • As part of the agency bidding and contracting process, construction companies are required to complete a pre-bid questionnaire that asks if they have been cited by Cal-OSHA for any serious and willful citations in the previous 10 years. Shimmick allegedly responded “no” to that question, and a Shimmick representative told the Chronicle that its answers on the city’s questionnaire were accurate. An analysis of Cal-OSHA records by the Chronicle, however, revealed that the company had received multiple safety violation citations in that period of time, many of which the company is protesting, including one involving a November 2016 death and an excavation-related incident for which the company received a serious/willful citation.
  • The increased scrutiny of contractors and their histories comes at the order of San Francisco Mayor London Breed who called for a “better system of checks and balances” when hiring contractors to perform on large city contracts. Agency spokesman Paul Rose told the Chronicle the SFMTA expected the Twin Peaks project to be completed on time and that it still planned to use Shimmick on future agency projects. The San Francisco Examiner yesterday reported that SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin reportedly defended the agency’s choice of contractor, calling Shimmick reputable.

Dive Insight:

States and municipalities typically require contractors to fill out a mountain of paperwork, but construction companies presenting false information on questionnaires or other qualification statements risk being debarred from doing business with an agency that determines they intentionally gave false answers or misrepresented mandatory qualifications having to do with elements of their businesses like work experience or financial capacity.

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Houston Is Being Rebuilt on a Foundation of Wage Theft (TX)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

The exploitation after the storm.

JANUARY 22, 2018
BY BRYCE COVERT

Pittsburgh City Council gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a measure that would require a $15 an hour minimum wage for employees of some contractors.

The bill would apply to companies in professional service contracts with the city over $100,000.

According to data from the City Controller’s Office, 31 contracts over $100,000 were approved in 2015. Most were related to construction projects, health care and software upgrades.

When the measure was introduced on Monday, Nov. 20, Mayor Bill Peduto said implementing it would have a minimal effect on the cost of contracts and the city’s finances.

“We want to work with companies that also believe a worker’s value should be a minimum of $15 an hour,” he said. “We are hoping this will be the standard for which Pittsburgh companies will recognize the worth of their workers.”

Peduto said this was the second part of a city wage plan that began in November 2015, when he signed an executive order to gradually increase minimum wage for city employees to $15 an hour by 2021. It’s currently $12.50.

…

Wage theft and safety violations were rampant in Houston’s low-wage construction industry even before the storm hit, according to local worker centers. One study found that 12.4 percent of construction workers in the city suffered injuries on the job. “The Texas construction industry is … incredibly dangerous,” says José Garza, executive director of the Workers Defense Project. “For years, the industry has absolutely failed to prioritize safety.”

(Read More)

Construction falls lead OSHA’s top safety violations for 2017

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Kim Slowey
Sep 27, 2017

Dive Brief:

  • Fall protection in the construction industry, specifically, led the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s annual list of the most commonly cited workplace safety violations, according to a preliminary ranking reported by the National Safety Council.
  • Four violations on this year’s list are specific to OSHA’s Part 1926 – Safety and Health Regulations for Construction), including inadequate fall protection, lack of guardrails for scaffolding, improper use of ladders and lack of fall-protection training, according to Business and Legal Resources.
  • The list is preliminary and the final version is due out in December, though it is not expected to change in the meantime. The category of Fall Protection – Training Requirements is new to OSHA’s top 10 this year.

Dive Insight:

Fall protection has been of particular concern to OSHA as falls remain the leading cause of accidental death on construction sites. Of the 937 job site deaths reported in 2015, 350 were fall-related.

In an effort to increase job-site safety, OSHA has taken to levying significant fines in the case of certain violations, such as repeat offenses. In August, OSHA fined a Florida roofing contractor more than $1.5 million after repeated fall-protection violations. To reinforce the citation’s severity, the agency also added the company to its Severe Violator Enforcement Program, under which it will be subject to extra monitoring and inspections.

Trench safety is another OSHA concern. Last month, the agency fined South Dakota contractor First Dakota Enterprises $95,000 for conditions that led to a non-fatal collapse. The worker, who was covered by debris as a result of the collapse, survived, but OSHA said the company did not provide the proper protection systems and inspections that could have prevented such an incident.

(Read More)

Contractor fined $189K for OR bridge safety violations

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Kim Slowey
June 21, 2017

Dive Brief:

  • The Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has fined a Minnesota contractor $189,000 and issued the company nine safety violations related to worker injuries on a Portland, OR, bridge project, according to KGW.com.
  • Oregon OSHA said contractor Abhe & Svoboda did not provide adequate fall protection for workers prior to an incident in which a worker fell 37 feet from the bridge and landed on another individual, injuring them both.
  • Company officials allegedly tried to justify their lack of compliance with Oregon’s safety rules by arguing that the rules change too often. The agency cited the company with two willful and seven serious violations.

Dive Insight:

While construction work in general is inherently dangerous, bridge work can be especially risky, as many employees are consistently working at elevated heights. In November, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation charged contractor Joseph B. Fay Co. $3.3 million for damages related to a fire that erupted on the Liberty Bridge in Pittsburgh while Fay was working there.

(Read More)

Trump signs bill that kills Obama-era Worker Safety Rule

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Kimberly Kindy
March 27 at 8:01 PM

President Trump signed a bill Monday that killed an Obama-era worker safety rule that required businesses competing for large federal contracts to disclose and correct serious safety and other labor law violations.

Earlier this month, the Senate voted to eliminate the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule, which applied to contracts valued at $500,000 or more. Votes on the bill in both the House and Senate divided along party lines.

The Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces regulation was finalized in August but most of it was never implemented. Within days of it being finalized, the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) sued, securing a temporary injunction that prohibited the federal government from implementing it.

In a last-minute effort to fight for the rule earlier this month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a staff report that showed 66 of the federal government’s 100 largest contractors have at some point violated federal wage and hour laws. Since 2015, the report says, more than a third of the 100 largest OSHA penalties have been imposed on federal contractors.

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City will soon be able to revoke permits at unsafe work sites

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Meghan E. Irons GLOBE STAFF
DECEMBER 16, 2016

City officials will soon have the authority to deny, revoke, or suspend a permit for any contractor with a poor record of ensuring their workers’ safety.

The City Council approved the safety measure this week, sending a strong message to anyone pulling permits after two construction workers died in October when a water line burst under a South End street, flooding the trench and thwarting attempts to save the men.

The employees – Robert Higgins and Kelvin Mattocks – worked for Atlantic Drain Services, a Roslindale company that was found to have a long and troubling history of violations, including citations for workers lacking oxygen underground and for conditions that could lead to cave-ins, federal records show.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who filed the ordinance proposal in November, aimed to hold individuals and companies accountable and sought better protection for workers by giving the city the power to intervene on their behalf.

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