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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 6, 2020)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | ...What’s Portland Public Schools hiding? From Page 1 were obeying the law. He had grounds for suspi- cion. In April 2019, after a sim- ilar investigation, Todd Con- struction paid $60,355 to 38 workers it had underpaid at Meadow Ridge Elementary School in Albany. The company blamed an error in its payroll system, and signed a compli- ance agreement with Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI). Now Todd had outbid several more experienced union contractors to win a $44 million contract to build a new school at Southeast 69th & Powell. Albany School District had sent Strickland unredacted certi- fied payroll records for Todd Con- struction within three weeks of his request. But PPS took its time on the public records request. After six days, an email acknowledged the request had been received. At 30 days, another email said they were actively working on collect- ing the records. At 53 days, the records came—but only for Todd Construction, and they were so heavily redacted there’d be no way to contact workers to confirm they were paid what Todd said they were. What about his request for Moore Excavation, Strickland asked? “Whoops! I think we missed that,” wrote PPS Public Records Officer Ryan Vandehey. Even heavily redacted, Strick- land said, the Todd Construction records revealed many irregular- ities. And they showed that hourly wages and benefits were $6 to $12.55 below the man- dated prevailing wage. Strick- land filed a complaint against Todd March 5 with BOLI, the state agency responsible for in- vestigating violations of the pre- vailing wage law. An investiga- tion is under way. When the records for Moore Excavation came, Strickland uncovered more problems: Moore was paying the prevail- ing wage—at 2017 rates. There’s a term for paying workers less than the law re- quires: Wage theft. When they’re caught, every wage thief has sto- ries about software glitches or the law’s terrible complexity. Union reps have heard all the ex- cuses, and they don’t buy them. The errors only ever go in one di- rection: subtraction from work- ers’ paychecks. “You’re telling me the same contractor that understands building codes, ADA require- ments, thousands of pages of ar- chitectural specifics … is befud- dled by a single form? The same contractor that can build a $100 million project to spec is not able to use Quickbooks?” Strickland says. At a roundtable meeting of local building trades union or- ganizers, Local 701’s frustra- tions tumbled out, and it turned out other unions had problems getting information from PPS: Laborers, Sheet Metal, Roofers, Cement Masons, Bricklayers. On March 19, Ryan Nielsen, a strategic researcher for the La- borers district Council, had re- quested a list of subcontractors that worked on recent PPS proj- ects. Knowing that the third in a series of school construction bonds would be on the Novem- ber ballot, Nielsen wanted to find out if past school construc- tion projects had employed La- borers union members or not. Forty-two days and several re- minder emails later, he got a re- sponse: It would take PPS staff 80 hours to find that informa- tion, for which the Laborers would have to pay $2,800. “It’s hard to see a price tag like that and not think this is in- tentional obstruction,” Nielsen told the Labor Press. “What they’re basically saying is we don’t have the names of the con- tractors that performed the work for us on a public bond. It really makes you wonder if at a basic level they don’t have that info accessible, what else don’t they Beware of “nurse case managers” in a work- ers’ compensation claim. You do not have to allow a nurse case manager to accompany you to your doctor’s appointments. Raymond Thomas James Coon Cynthia Newton Chris Frost www.tcnf.legal Sydney Montanaro Scott Sell Chris Thomas 820 SW Second Ave., Suite 200, Portland, OR 97204 November 6, 2020 | PAGE 3 Lincoln High School, left, is the latest Port- land high school to get a com- plete modern- ization. Building trades union reps say union firms have been getting very lit- tle of the work, even though all bidders must pay the same prevailing wage. But Portland Public Schools has frustrated their efforts to investigate if nonunion firms are cheating on wages. have in terms of oversight?” In July, Bricklayers Local 1 field rep Matteo Russo requested certified payroll records for nonunion Prestige Tile for its work on Grant High School. Thirty days later, PPS said it would take 10 hours of work to identify, compile, and review (redact) the records (for a single contractor on a single project), for which the district would charge $370. Russo said Multnomah County provides the same kind of information for $35, or even free. “PPS is the worst I’ve had to deal with as far as obtaining in- formation,” Russo says. “We’re essentially helping PPS by go- ing through these records, on our dime, and looking to see if their rules are followed,” Russo said. “Our goal is to make sure these workers aren’t getting cheated out of money.” In October, exasperated with the district, building trades rep- resentatives started showing up outside PPS construction sites with two giant inflatables: Scabby the Rat and his cigar- chomping worker-squeezing pal Fat Cat. “What is PPS hiding” said a custom-made banner. “We’re a pro-worker non- profit,” Strickland says. “Yes, we’re a union, but whatever you want to call us, we’re looking to enforce, for free, all the laws you’re supposed to enforce.” “PPS, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is aiding and abetting wage theft,” Nielsen says. “That’s the bottom line.” Union reps say they’re not giving up or going away. And they may have an ally. In Sep- tember, PPS board member Michelle DePass, chair of the district’s school improvement bond committee, met with building trades officials to get their side of the story. DePass has a background in construc- tion management. She says she was disturbed by what she heard, and plans on following up to get to the bottom of it.
