McGarvey of North American Building Trades Unions addresses MBTC convention (MA)

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April 19, 2019 – Construction Design & Engineering

Plymouth, MA The Massachusetts Building Trades Council (MBTC) unveiled its 2019 agenda to elevate the interests of construction workers and union contractors across the Commonwealth. The three-day convention was held at HOTEL 1620.

Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTC), served as keynote. McGarvey represents millions of workers from 14 national and international unions in the U.S. and Canada. He addressed hundreds of local labor leaders and delegates who made the trip to the town for the convention. The delegates at the convention came from 74 member locals, who together represent 75,000 men and women from across the Commonwealth.

The 2019 agenda discussion included policies around Apprenticeship & Training, providing career paths for more women & people of color, workplace safety, building more affordable housing, state and federal legislative priorities, and veteran employment.

Cracking down on the state’s wage theft epidemic remained a top concern, with MassBTC president Frank Callahan calling on the state legislature to provide additional funding for investigators within the Attorney General’s office. “Funds spent on wage enforcement more than pay for themselves in the form of taxes from recovered wages, and fines and penalties paid by the violators,” said Callahan. “Expanding wage enforcement personnel isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s an economically wise investment for taxpayers too.

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(Op-ED) Keith Ellison: Time to Address Wage Theft is Now (MN)

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By Keith Ellison, Union Advocate
April 29, 2019

Frankly, I was shocked.

Here I was, listening to a man through an interpreter describe how the paycheck that he worked so hard for at fairly low wages was delivered to him in a debit card. He didn’t get a regular paycheck or a check stub of any kind: he was told that this debit card represented his pay and that the pay had been deposited for him.

It was hard for him to figure out how much he had actually gotten paid. When he did, he found that he had lost as many as three days’ wages even though he had worked hard every single day.

…

These folks are all victims of wage theft. Wage theft takes many forms: having hours shaved off your paycheck; being forced to work off the clock; not getting paid for overtime; being paid at a lower rate than promised, sometimes below minimum wage; being paid in cash or other forms, with no Social Security, unemployment, or worker’s comp withheld; being misclassified as an independent contractor; and more.

…

I was also shocked at the frequency with which wage theft happens. Reputable studies from several years ago estimate that two-thirds of all low-wage workers in the country have experienced at least one form of wage theft. The amount of wages stolen each year in Minnesota may be in the hundreds of millions of dollars: nationally, the Economic Policy Institute has estimated that $50 billion a year is stolen in wage theft. That’s more than three times the value of all the goods stolen through robbery, burglary, larceny and auto theft combined.

Those estimates are 5-10 years old now. In an economy that’s gotten more and more predatory, it’s surely only gotten worse.

One reason people don’t know wage theft happens is because employers often retaliate or threaten to retaliate against people who report it. Another reason is that wage theft commonly happens in the shadows, to the most vulnerable among us, especially immigrants, people of color, and young people. African American workers are three times more likely to have had their wages stolen than white workers, and Latina/o workers are four times more likely. The predators who steal from these folks do so because they figure they’re the least likely to report it.

Too often, wage theft is connected to criminal abuse. According to human-rights advocates, every case of human trafficking also involves wage theft. If you find people being trafficked, you’ll find people whose wages are being stolen. That’s happening right here: in Hennepin County, a contractor has been charged with human trafficking, insurance fraud, and undocumented wage theft. The charges claim that “he knew the men that he had employed were undocumented workers and used that knowledge as leverage to force them to work long hours for less than market pay and without adequate safety protection,” and that “when workers were injured, he told his employees that they would lose their jobs and be deported if they sought medical attention.”

…

– Keith Ellison has been serving as Minnesota’s Attorney General since January 7, 2019. As the People’s Lawyer, his job is to help Minnesotans afford their lives and live with dignity and respect. Before becoming Attorney General, he represented Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives for 12 years.

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Multnomah County takes on wage theft (OR)

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Apr 16, 2019 | Workers Rights
By Don McIntosh

A proposed pilot program could make Multnomah County a trailblazer in fighting wage theft in construction. To make the case for it, a panel of union members and advocates addressed the County Commission April 9 about the many ways unscrupulous contractors cheat workers out of wages – and why the complaint-driven process at Oregon’s understaffed Bureau of Labor and Industries isn’t enough to stop it. [Watch their presentation here.]

Wage theft is the underpayment or nonpayment of wages or benefits that workers are legally entitled to receive. It’s not uncommon in construction – even on taxpayer-funded public construction projects that employ compliance staff to guard against it. Those staff need help, several union representatives told commissioners.

And they’d get that help under the proposal put forward by Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury’s office. As detailed in a budget memo, the proposed Labor Compliance Pilot Program would allow knowledgeable members of the public, such as union representatives, to volunteer to help enforce prevailing wage and wage and hour laws on County construction projects. The volunteers would have access to the certified payroll records that contractors submit to the County – and be allowed to visit worksites to interview workers.

Modeled on a program at Los Angeles Unified School District, the pilot project would assign a half-time-equivalent staff person to train and support 10 volunteers who would visit the County’s construction projects.

…

Thirteen ways to cheat your employees out of wages

Wage theft is far too common in construction. Here are some ways crooked contractors do it.

  • Don’t pay them. Hire a day laborer for a day’s work, then stiff them when the work is done.
  • Don’t pay for breaks. Tell them the company’s in too big a hurry for them to take meal and rest breaks.
  • Don’t pay them overtime. You can’t afford time-and-a-half.
  • Tell them they’re independent contractors. That gets you out of paying employer Social Security tax, unemployment insurance, workers’ comp, and maybe even minimum wage.
  • Don’t pay them for time in transit. Tell them to pick up the company truck and equipment and drive 50 miles to the work site, but pay them only for the hours they work on site.
  • Call them apprentices. Pay your journeymen the apprentice wage.
  • Work them off-the-clock. Ask them to do a little prep work before they clock in, or a little cleanup after they clock out.
  • Ask for kickbacks. You gave them the prevailing wage job, didn’t you? Have them pay some of those higher wages back to you, or to the foreman, or labor broker.
  • Pay piece rate. So what if it ends up less than minimum wage?
  • Deduct things from their wages. Why should you pay for the tools or supplies they need to do the job?
  • Misclassify them. On a prevailing wage job, pay them at the laborer rate while they do carpenter or painter work.
  • Leave off benefits. Prevailing wage includes money for benefits, but who can afford to offer them?
  • Lie about the number of hours they work. Pay the prevailing wage. Just tell the project superintendent that your employees worked half as many hours as they really did.

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‘Put The Exploiters In Jail’: Wage Theft Bill Cracks Down On Employers

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By Shaun Boyd
April 2, 2019 at 6:40 pm

The Colorado Fiscal Institute says more than 500,000 Colorado workers are victims of wage theft each year, losing an estimated $750 million. And right now, there’s little prosecutors can do about it.

Under current state law, wage theft is a misdemeanor, no matter if it’s $100 or $100,000. Representatives Jonathan Singer and Meg Froelich plan to change that.

“When a hard day’s work is put in, an honest day’s pay is deserved,” said Singer.

He and Froelich have introduced a bill that would align wage theft with other thefts. If it’s over $2,000, it would be a felony.

“Wage theft is perpetrated against the most vulnerable workers,” said Froelich.

It is especially common in the construction and food service industries. Jim Gleason, a carpenter, says he was a victim.

“We were getting paid every week until about the 4th or 5th week and we were informed that there wasn’t enough money to make payroll so if we didn’t mind waiting a week, we’d pay for two weeks the next week,” he said. “Well, the next week came and there was no check. It’s time we put the exploiters in jail and got the penalties that they deserve and give the wages to the people who deserve them.”

The Colorado District Attorney’s Council agrees.

“Why is it that someone should face a greater penalty for stealing your cellphone then for having your wages stolen?” asked Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty. “It is the exact same offense and should be treated the same under law and until we do so we’re going to allow immigrants and poor people in this state to be victimized.”

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