Street Roots • Oct. 28-Nov. 3, 2016
News
Page 5
He said some labor brokers have been
known to threaten workers.
“It comes to the point where some of
those people, their families are threatened
back home,” he said.
n December, Antonio Becerra was on
lunch break from framing in a new high-
end apartment building, The Fifty at
Division, on the corner of Southeast
Division Street and 50th Avenue, when a
union rep approached him.
It was a Friday, and that evening Becerra
attended his first union meeting. The
following Monday morning, he was fired -
right after his supervisor asked him if he
accepted the rep’s invitation.
Becerra, a 31-year-old husband and father,
said he had worked for Timber Technologies
LLC for about 18 months without incident.
With the help of the union, Becerra filed
a complaint with the U.S. National Labor
Relations Board, and Timber Technologies
agreed to a non-admission settlement
payment of $128 and was required to post
notices at its jobsites, informing workers
that they have the right to join a union or
organize.
Street Roots interviewed several other
workers who were also new to the
carpenters union.
One was Will Medrano, who immigrated
to the U.S. from El Salvador two decades
ago and has spent the majority of the time
since working in wood framing and siding.
He said that before joining the union, he
was often denied overtime pay. At his last
job, he said, he was making $4 less per hour
when he left than when he started, but he
put up with it because of his immigration
status.
“I didn’t have documents,” he said. “It
was scary.”
One man declined to be named because
he was still working for a non-union
employer when the interview took place. He
had a freshly broken arm wrapped in a cast,
which he said his boss was hassling him
about. He had fallen off a ladder while on
the job.
“They don’t like me to see the doctor,” he
said.
He came to the union that night with a
friend; it was his first meeting.
“I want to join,” he said. “We work hard.”
Another worker we spoke with, Jesus
Vasquez, is one of eight men who filed a
claim against G Builders LLC for what they
allege is roughly $7,000 owed to them for
work they did on new high-end apartment
buildings and a creative office space and
retail building located in downtown and
inner Southeast and Southwest Portland.
The union helped them refer the case the
wages.
Prevailing wages are area standard wages
that the law requires be paid to laborers
working on taxpayer-funded construction
projects, which for drywall installation and
wood framing is about $35 per hour.
Non-union framers and dry wall installers
are typically paid piece rate, or can earn
anywhere from $10 to $25 per hour, union
representatives say.
BOLI’s largest wage claim suit to date
resulted from an audit of a public-works
project at Southern Oregon University in
2015. It found that 44 different contractors
and subcontractors had all failed to pay
workers the legally required wages to the
tune of $2.5 million in the construction of a
dining hall and student housing.
As a deterrent to wage theft, BOLI has
the ability to debar contractors, which
prevents them from being able to bid on
taxpayer-funded construction projects for a
period of time, usually a couple of years.
There are 58 contractors and companies
currently debarred. Only two contractors
have been debarred for life in Oregon.
I
BY THE NUMBERS ■
260: Wage claims in construction
referred to BOLI between July 1,
2013, and June 30,2015.
2nd: Oregon's construction
industry has the second-most
wage complaints, after bars and
restaurante. However,
construction had a higher
reported rate of wage theft when
the number of complainte
between July 1,2013, and June
ristian Salgado directs Vbz’s drop-in
Worker Center just south of where
Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard extends
above Interstate 84.
It’s a place where day laborers can go to
get legal advice if an employer owes them
money, learn about their rights and find job
opportunities with member employers who
are required to offer at least $12 an hour for
a minimum of four hours.
Salgado said immigrants are often
surprised when they learn they have any
labor rights at all.
“It’s pretty amazing,” he said. “It reveals
why people take advantage - they are
amazed they have the right to be paid.”
Salgado, like Sanchez, is motivated by
personal experience. His parents brought
him to the U.S. from Mexico when he was
5, and he grew up working on farms, picking
strawberries and raspberries.
He was drawn to working with
immigrants and took a job as a caseworker
at a nonprofit in Springfield that offers
services and resources to Latinos. He
worked there for several years before
attending the University of Oregon in 2011
as a political science major.
The summer after he graduated, he
traveled up to Washington to work the
cherry harvest and was reminded of why he
had advocated for immigrants’ rights.
He said he saw workers handling
hazardous chemicals with no protection and
working 14 to 15 hours a day with no
overtime pay. He went back to work at the
C
PHOTO BY EMILY GREEN
Cristian Salgado stands in front of the Worker Center, which he directs for Voz, in Portland.
The nonprofit runs a twice-weekly wage theft clinic where volunteer attorneys help workers file
claims for wages they are owed, primarily in construction.
The Sept. 23 meeting of the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters overflows with
Latino workers at the union’s Portland headquarters.
Department of Labor, where it’s under
investigation.
Earlier this year, the Labor Department
found a major Oregon drywall company,
Westside Drywall, had failed to pay its
workers at least $1 million in wages over the
past six years.
The Hubbard-based contractor was sued
2015, we compared with toe
number of jobs in each industry.
49: Number of contractors in the J
Portland area who were fined by
the Oregon Contractors Board in
September for operating without a
license, working with an
unlicensed subcontractor, or other
license-related violations.
3 OUt of 4: Construction
jobsites in the tri-county area
found to be noncompliant in
in 2010 for $200,000 owed to 62 workers,
and then was sued again this past February
for $800,000 owed to more than 100
workers in unpaid overtime.
In March, the Department of Labor sued
PR Drywall in Hillsboro for more than
$98,000 in back wages owed to employees
for overtime and shortages in prevailing
3rd: Construction was the third-
meeting safety standards when
inspected by Oregon
Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, 2013-16.
deadliest Oregon industry during
2014, trailing behind logging and
Knsportation
507: Number of construction
47: Number of full-time positions
sitesinspectedforsafety in the
tri-county area in that time
at BOLI’s wage and hour division
to 1993, following significant
budget cute to the agency.
294: Safety violations cited by
OSHA where toe reasonably
predictable injury to a worker
would be death, 2013-16
30: Number ofM-timepo^idns
at BOLI’s wage and hour division
today. As Oregon’s workforce
grows, those investigating labor
See WORKERS, page 7
law compliance continue to
decrease in number
$2.5 million: Largest dollar
amount owed to workers after a
BOLI investigation BOLI found 44
construction contractors owed
their employees $2.5 million in toe
building of a new dining hall and
student residence at Southern
Oregon University in 2015
■ ■ IlliM
- ftwuy Cnen I