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.