NERCC's Carpenters Center catches Globe's eye

The Boston Globe and Boston.com today featured a story about the Carpenters Center being built by the New England Regional Council of Carpenters.

Motorists stuck on the Southeast Expressway soon will have something besides radios and cellphones to grab their attention: trainees learning carpentry at the new Carpenters Center in Dorchester.

The striking $19 million, 75,000-square-foot home of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters is being readied for a Feb. 1 opening on the edge of the expressway. At drivers’ eye level, and less than 30 feet from the southbound travel lane, will be oversize windows that look in on the training center for area carpenters.

The entire story can be read here

Kerry Sponsors Bill Aimed at Misclassification of Workers

Full story here…

Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., introduced legislation this week that would toughen standards for employers in transportation and other industries that use independent contractors.

The bill introduced Dec. 15 is aimed at tightening a provision in the tax law that businesses argue simplifies the tax code but critics say allows employers to misclassify workers and avoid payments of benefits and unemployment taxes.

Kerry is targeting Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978, known as the “Safe Harbor” provision. The provision allows employers to classify workers as contractors for employment tax purposes without undergoing a common law test of their status, unless the employer’s classification has no “reasonable basis” or fails certain requirements.

Kerry’s bill, the Taxpayer Responsibility, Accountability and Consistency Act of 2009, would require companies to file reports with the Internal Revenue Service on each corporate provider of property and service to whom they pay more than $600 a year.

It would make additional changes to Section 530 to reduce abuses, Kerry and the bill’s co-sponsors, all Democrats, said. “This is about leveling the playing field and ensuring that America's workers receive the protections and pay they deserve,” he said.

Carpenters to rally for jobs

Carpenters will rally on Thursday, December 17th at 4:00 pm at Bronstein Park in Manchester, NH, located on the corner of Hanover and Beech Street, in the hopes of jump-starting a large project at Manchester’s Job Corps Center.

The project was brought to a halt in November when North Branch Construction, Inc. and the Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc. (ABC) filed a bid protest that put an end to the project.

Any and all members are encouraged to attend the rally. Labor leaders, elected officials, youth leaders, and clergy and will be speaking at the event. Hot soup will be served.

For more information about the rally, contact John Jackson at 603-365-0426.

To learn more, visit www.Plaswork.org.

CT papers cover Stop Work orders

The State of Connecticut continues its fight against misclassification of employees and has issued five more Stop Work orders on a job in Fairfield. The orders were posted at the Patterson Club, a new country club being built by general contractor AP Construction.

NERCC Organizer Ted Duarte and Bob Kravitz, owner of union company Whitehawk Construction Services, were quoted in news stories about the action taken by the Connecticut Labor Department:

Bob Kravitz, owner of Whitehawk Construction Services LLC, of Canton, said he bid to do the millwork installation at the Patterson Club, but didn't get the job.

And it was the millwork installers who were cited by the state at the Patterson Club.

"I bid on a number of packages," Kravitz said of his attempt to win the work. He said the selection process included showing the potential client the jobs he's done at Yale University.

"But then the trail went cold," he said. And the job went to someone else.

Kravitz said this is not the first time it's happened. He's lost jobs before to nonunion shops. Sometimes he ends up with the work anyway, he said, because the job gets botched. But, he said, it's never as big a job as it would have been if he'd gotten the project in the first place.

How misclassification works and why it hurts union carpenters and contractors is explained very well in the article, making it a good independent information source to forward to elected officials and others involved in the construction industry. It is available online here.

Gangi featured speaking on stimulus

Carpenters Local 111 Business Manager Joe Gangi attended an event with Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Congresswoman Niki Tsongas yesterday to discuss the impact stimulus money is having on job creation. Gangi was interviewed for the report on New England Cable News:

Unions being heard in health care debate

Unions are fighting hard on Capitol Hill to prevent a tax on many union health plans from becoming a final part of a national overhaul of the health care system. The Associated Press covered the issue last week saying

At issue for the labor unions is a proposed 40 percent excise tax on insurance companies, keyed to premiums paid on health care plans costing more than $8,500 annually for individuals and $23,000 for families. The tax would raise some $150 billion over 10 years to help pay for the Democrats' nearly $1 trillion health care bill. The legislation, which appears to be edging closer to passage, would revamp the U.S. health care system with new requirements on individuals and employers designed to extend health coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans.

The plan would essentially tax people who have been buying their health care in order to pay for those who have not. Similar measures are already in place in many states in the country to provide funds for a “free care pool” or “uncompensated care pool” whereby medical providers are reimbursed by the state for services given to those who do not have coverage.

Union contractor makes valuable donation

Jay Cashman, Inc. has been a union contractor for many, many years. The business--based in Quincy, Massachusetts and with offices in Boston, New York and Florida--does heavy civil and marine construction throughout the United States. Jay Cashman also acts as a developer and generous member of the business community and has been a sponsor of the "Carpenters Cure Fore Ovarian Cancer Classic."

His latest act of philanthropy was to donate more than 27 acres of company-owned land in Stoughton to a YMCA which it surrounds.

Company must pay for insurance, unemployment fraud

A Massachusetts roofing company pled guilty Friday to 20 counts of unemployment fraud, four counts of larceny over $250, 60 counts of aiding or assiting in fraudlent tax returns and three counts of workers compensation fraud. Richard Copeland, owner of Copeland Contracting, Inc. (CCI) was given three-and-a-half years of probation and will pay $146,851 in restitution, according to a press release from the Attorney General's office. He was also ordered to complete 100 hours of community service.

From the release:

During the period of November 2003 through January 2008, Copeland held workers’ compensation policies with three different insurance companies. During that time, Copeland avoided paying the proper premium for these policies by misclassifying the type of work his employees performed. Copeland classified his employees as carpenters instead of roofers. During this five-year time period, three workers suffered serious injuries on work sites where CCI was doing business. When the injured workers filed workers’ compensation claims with CCI’s insurance companies, the insurance companies discovered that none of the injured employees were listed on CCI’s payroll. One of the insurance companies then contacted the Massachusetts Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) as a result of the discrepancies between the payroll records and an injured worker’s claim.

The case was investigated by the Attorney General's Insurance and Unemployment Fraud Division as well as the state Insurance Fraud Bureau.

Obama focuses on job creation

Though early talk about a federal stimulus bill centered on economic growth and recovery, some felt too much was invested in tax cuts. And while Wall Street seems to be doing better, the talk of jobs has turned troublesome. More and more, mentions are being made of a "jobless recovery," a startling turn for those who imagined the stimulus bill serving as a job creating machine as the WWII spending efforts are remembered.

So it comes as welcome news that President Barack Obama is now talking about investment in actual job creation. His proposal would take advantage of unused money intended for bailouts of banks and financial institutions. There is resistance from the right, but Obama seems determined to try to use that unused money to both pay down some debt, but stimulate job growth.

In a speech at the Brookings Institution, Obama said he wants to give small businesses tax breaks for new hires and equipment purchases. He also wants to expand American Recovery and Reinvestment Act programs and spend some $50 billion more on roads, bridges, aviation and water projects.

Finally, Obama would offer consumers rebates for retro-fitting their homes to consume less energy.

A new fan of Cape Wind

National Grid has reached an agreement to buy power from Cape Wind when the project is built.

Step one: diagnose the problem

Efforts by Union Carpenters or other advocates to uncover bad deeds often run into a wall of ignorance or denial. But two prominently featured stories on Boston.com today shine a bright light on some significant issues in the construction industry and elsewhere that clearly need some attention.

The first relates to public work being awarded to contractors despite their previous violations of various laws and their failure to disclose those violations as required by law.

The story focuses on stimulus money given to companies for paving projects, but the lack of oversight is clearly a problem that carries into other projects at the state and local level. At it's worst, the problem is intentional, as awarding authorities ignore likely or confirmed violations of prequalification or bidding laws in order to hire the contractor that simply has the lowest price.

A clear example of this can be found in Hanover, where the town awarded a public school project to Callahan Construction, despite multiple warnings from the Attorney General's office that the company had misled the town. At issue there was the company's attempt to prequalify for the project by taking credit for similar work that was done by another company. Though they claim to be a successor, they did not disclose financial problems they would've been required to include in documents if that were the case.

The second is about the massive settlement Wal-Mart just reached with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This time out, the company is paying $40 million to almost 90,000 workers for illegally lowering workers pay by refusing to pay overtime, manipulating time cards and making workers skip legally mandated breaks.

Yes, 90,000 workers. Hardly a mistake with paperwork. And don't make the mistake of thinking Wal-Mart is being a good corporate citizen by settling the suit; it was filed in 2001!