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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (June 5, 2020)
PAGE 2 | June 5, 2020 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS (International Standard Serial Number 0894-444X) Established in 1900 in Portland, Oregon as a voice of the la- bor movement. Published on a semi-monthly basis on the first and third Fridays of each month by the Oregon Labor Press Publishing Co. Inc., a non-profit mutual benefit corpo- ration owned by 20 unions and councils including the Ore- gon AFL-CIO. Serving more than 120 union organizations in Oregon and Southwest Washington. Office location: 4275 NE Halsey St., Portland, Oregon Mailing address: P.O. Box 13150, Portland, OR 97213 Phone: (503) 288-3311 Web address: http://nwlaborpress.org Editor & Manager: Michael Gutwig Senior staff reporter: Don McIntosh Office manager: Jill Lukens Printed on recycled paper, using soy-based inks, by members of Teamsters Local 747-M. SUBSCRIPTIONS: Individual subscriptions are $15 a year for union members, $23 a year for all others. Pay by credit card online at nwlaborpress.org/subscribe, or send a check to our mailing address (above) along with your name, address and union affiliation, if any. Group rates of 48 cents an issue per member — $11.52 a year are available for 25 or more subscriptions; call 503-288-3311 for details. CORRECTIONS: See an error? Please let us know at editor@nwlaborpress.org or by phone at 503-288-3311. PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID AT PORTLAND, OREGON. CHANGE OF ADDRESS: If you move, let us know at nwlaborpress.org/subscriber-services or by mail at our mailing address (above). Be sure to provide your old and new addresses and the name/number of your local union. Please allow three weeks for the change to take effect. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS P.O. BOX 13150 PORTLAND, OR 97213-0150 Low Prices! Coats, etc. Mon-Fri 9-6, Sat 9:30-5:30, Sun 12-6 PLEASE SHOW OUR ADVERTISERS YOU APPRECIATE THEIR SUPPORT FOR THIS LABOR MOVEMENT NEWSPAPER! ...Wage theft From Page 1 stucco, and install weather-proof- ing foam around doors and win- dows. The work took place at a six-story 110-unit luxury apart- ment building, 35 Club Apart- ments, named for its address at 35 Club Road in Eugene. In November, an ODP em- ployee on the project reached out directly to Local 82. To commu- nicate with the Spanish-speaking worker, Business Manager Kent Sickles called in José Avalos, an organizer for sister union Cement Masons Local 555. Avalos inter- viewed two ODP workers and shared what he learned with Mario Silva, a Seattle-based spe- cialist employed by OPCMIA to investigate cases of wage theft throughout the Pacific Northwest. Silva says pay stubs provided by the two workers were all he needed to show that ODP was vi- olating federal law. Since 1931, a federal law known as Davis-Bacon has re- quired contractors to pay the local prevailing wage on federally funded construction projects. The law is meant to prevent the gov- ernment’s purchasing power from driving down local wage rates. The idea is that the public interest is best served by having the work done right, with contrac- tors who compete based on qual- ity and efficiency, not on who can get away with paying workers the lowest. The Labor Department determines annually what the pre- vailing wage is in each area for each construction craft specialty. Workers on the 35 Club Apart- ments project were entitled to be paid the prevailing wage because the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had guaranteed a 40-year $26.5 million loan on the project. ODP employees, as plasterers, were supposed to be paid $32.22 an hour plus $16.58 an hour in fringe benefits. Because ODP doesn’t provide workers fringe benefits, it was supposed to pay workers the combined $48.80 an hour. But the ODP employees Ava- los talked with never saw wages that high. One was being paid $25.99 and another $34.45, their pay stubs showed. And that was actually a big pay bump for them: On previous projects, ODP had paid $15 an hour. And that wasn’t all, according interviews the union conducted with workers. The workers were not paid over- time they were supposed to be paid, and had to pay their em- ployer in cash for hotel rooms where they slept five to a room. They also told Avalos they were given just one 30-minute break per 10-hour day. Avalos helped the workers fill out and sign official complaint forms in English, and Silva turned the evidence over to an in- vestigator at the Wage and Hour Division office in San Francisco. HUD and the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor investigated and found that ODP had misclassified its workers, paying them at the rate for laborers instead of the rate for plasterers. Investigators also de- termined that the cash payments for the hotel violated a federal law called the Copeland Act, which bars employers from taking kick- backs from workers on federally- funded projects. There was more. When the plasterers worked more than 40 hours a week, they weren’t paid time and a half as federal law requires. And Port- land area workers weren’t paid for the extra two hours of drive time it took to get to Eugene. Of the nine workers, five co- operated and received checks ranging from $3,708 to $33,244. Reached by phone, ODP owner Oscar Palacios agreed he had paid some workers at the la- borers rate, but said that’s because they did some laborer worker and weren’t qualified to do stucco work unsupervised. Palacios did- n’t document what they were do- ing every hour on the job, he said. “I could have hired an attorney, and paid maybe 15 or 20 grand more and fought it, but I don’t have time to fight,” Palacio told the Labor Press. “I made good money on the project.” Sickles, the Local 82 business manager, said he hoped to find good union jobs for the workers, but only one of the five could pass E-verify, the voluntary gov- ernment program that verifies that employees have the legal right to work in the United States. Members of the union-signatory contractors association Associ- ated Wall & Ceiling Contractors of Oregon and S.W. Washington use E-Verify, and it’s required for contractors on federal construc- tion projects. “All my employers follow the rules,” Sickles said. “That’s the reason this upsets me.” Wage theft doesn’t just harm workers, it also cheats the state of tax revenue and workers’ comp contributions, and it’s unfair to competitors who play by the rules, says Victor Roach, presi- dent of Western Partitions Inc., the family-owned and proudly union company that was under- bid by ODP Systems. “When contractors get away with cheating, it’s kind of a race to the bottom,” Roach said. “If that happened everywhere, it would put us out of business.”
