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Gary homeless project contractors cited for pay violations (IL)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Carole Carlson
February 18, 2019

The U.S. Department of Labor ordered four contractors, who built the $9.5 million Village of Hope federal housing project in Gary, to pay workers $255,474 for failing to pay prevailing wages and fringe benefits. 
The labor department announced the ruling last week.

The wage law violations impacted 53 former and current employees, according to a release from the labor department.

“Government contractors receive detailed agreements that include prevailing wage and fringe benefits rates, required to be paid by all contractors working on a federally funded project.

Prime contractors must assure that their subcontractors adhere to these rules as well,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Patricia Lewis, in Indianapolis.The project’s prime contractor TWG Construction LLC, based in Indianapolis – has paid $82,477 to 20 employees.

TWG Construction LLC sub-contracted with a temporary staffing company, which failed to pay cleaning service crews in accordance with federal law.
The labor department’s investigation found temporary employees were misclassified and not paid the required prevailing wage rates.

Also, 8 Aces Construction Inc., Lansing, Ill., has paid $69,022 to 19 employees. Investigators found the company failed to pay finishers, painters and carpenters prevailing wage rate. The employer also failed to pay required fringe benefits to employees.

Due to the repeat and “willful nature” of these violations, the labor department said 8 Aces Construction Inc. and owner Jose “Tony” Ochoa have been declared ineligible to bid on federal contracts for a period of three years. A 2017 investigation found 8 Aces owed back wages totaling $99,313 to 95 employees.

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AG: Leominster construction firm ordered to pay nearly $840,000 for violating labor laws (MA)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Peter Jasinski
UPDATED: 10/31/2018 02:40:51 PM EDT

BOSTON — A Leominster construction company has been ordered to pay $837,341 in restitution and penalties for making illegal deductions from worker paychecks following the second investigation in less than three years of allegations the company was violating labor laws.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced Wednesday that Force Corporation and its managers, Juliano Fernandes, Anderson Dos Santos, and Claudio Cicero Da Silva have been issued two civil citations for failing to make timely payment of wages and failure to furnish payroll records to the AG’s office.

“Force Corporation and its managers cheated their construction workers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Healey in a written statement. “To build this case, our team documented the use of dozens of illegal tricks used by employers to steal from workers.”

This most recent investigation began after state officials received several complaints from the New England Regional Council of Carpenters.

The AG’s investigation revealed that Force Corporation has been regularly taking illegal deductions from employees weekly wages to pay for tools, safety equipment, and advances in what Healey referred to as a “textbook example of wage theft.”

The investigation also showed that Force unlawfully required employees to purchase their own tools through a company owned by Fernandes, one of Force’s managers.

…

The company was found in willful violation of federal labor laws and ordered to pay nearly $2.4 million back wages and damages to 478 employees in 2016 and $262,000 in fines for violating the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
According to an investigation by the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor, Force Corporation created a separate company, AB Construction Group of Framingham, as a way to provide Force with employers but classify them as independent contractors. This misclassification led to the company failing to pay employees overtime and keep accurate time and payroll records.

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OSHA fines MA roofer $125K after company ignored fall hazard warnings

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

By Kim Slowey
August 12, 2016

Dive Brief:

  • The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has cited Massachusetts roofing company Roof King for three willful, one repeat and nine serious violations related to falls and other hazards and fined the company $124,960.
  • According to an agency press release, Roof King’s onsite supervisory personnel ignored an OSHA inspector’s instructions as to how fall hazards could be remedied, and a subsequent inspection revealed that the company continued to put its employees at risk.
  • OSHA said that among other violations, its inspector observed Roof King’s employees working without fall protection at heights of more than 45 feet off the ground, on a lower, sloped roof and on ladders that did not extend at least 3 feet above landings.

 

Dive Insight:

“Employees should never have to risk their lives for a paycheck,” said Anthony Covello, OSHA’s area director for Essex and Middlesex counties, in a press release. He said preventable falls make up approximately 40% of all construction industry deaths and that Roof King must take action to avoid serious employee injuries or death.

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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United States: Illinois Supreme Court Upholds One Of The Nation’s Strictest Worker Misclassification Laws; Employers May Face Millions Of Dollars In Penalties

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

Worker misclassification is now a bet-the-company issue.

On February 21, 2004, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected a constitutional challenge to Illinois’s Employee Classification Act (the “ECA”), a law that defines most individuals who perform construction-related services as employees of the company who retains them, even if the relationship is set up as an independent contractor relationship.  Illinois’s ECA is one of the strictest worker misclassification statutes in the country.

Bartlow v. Costigan arose out of a preliminary finding that a small construction firm, Jack’s Roofing, had misclassified 10 workers as independent contractors instead of employees for periods ranging from 8 to 160 days in 2008.  The Illinois Department of Labor calculated a potential penalty for having misclassified these 10 workers as $1.6 Million.  Under the Illinois misclassification law, each day that each worker is misclassified is considered a separate violation, with fines of up to $1,000 for a first offense.  Willful violations result in triple damages.  Subsequent violations double the penalties again.

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(Please note that the date of this court decision is actually February 21, 2014)