Labor Ready Agrees To Implement A Nationwide Public Work Training Program For Its Job Placement Staff To Ensure That Eligible Workers Receive Prevailing Wages
Schneiderman: It Is Unacceptable That Labor Ready’s Job Placement Employees Are Unaware Of Basic Prevailing Wage Laws That Exist To Protect Workers
NEW YORK – Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced an agreement with Labor Ready, which operates offices, across New York and other states, that provide temporary-staffing services to a wide range of employers. The agreement requires Labor Ready to implement a nationwide program to train its job placement employees about laws that require payment of at least the “prevailing wage” rates to workers on public work projects, including construction or maintenance of public buildings. In addition, the agreement requires Labor Ready to pay $10,000 in restitution to two workers, and to pay $10,000 in penalties.
“Labor Ready is a large corporation that dispatches thousands of workers to a wide range of worksites across the country every year,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “It’s unacceptable that Labor Ready's job placement employees would be unaware of basic prevailing wage laws that exist to protect workers on our most important public work projects, such as building schools, hospitals, and other public buildings.”
In summer 2012, Labor Ready’s Hempstead branch office dispatched two workers to a school construction site in Bellmore, Long Island without identifying the job as a public work project. Instead of paying the required prevailing wage rates, Labor Ready paid the workers $8 per hour. Federal and state prevailing wage laws seek to ensure that contractors on government projects pay wages and benefits that are comparable to the local norms for a given trade, typically well above the minimum wage.
In addition to the violations related to these two employees, the investigation by the Attorney General’s Labor Bureau revealed that not only were Labor Ready job placement employees at the Hempstead branch office inadequately trained about prevailing wage requirements, but also that Labor Ready overall lacked an effective system to ensure that its job placement staff could appropriately identify prevailing wage jobs. Labor Ready has previously been cited and/or investigated for violations of state and federal prevailing wage laws in, among other locations, Oregon, Missouri, and Illinois.
Under the Attorney General’s agreement, Labor Ready will implement a nationwide training program that will educate its job placement employees about public work legal requirements on at least an annual basis, and will send regular reports to the Attorney General regarding employee trainings. Labor Ready will also require employers seeking workers in New York State to certify that they will comply with the law, and will not work with employers who Labor Ready knows are subject to an unsatisfied court or agency decision concerning unpaid wages. Also, for prevailing wage jobs, Labor Ready will not place employees at any companies which are on publicly available debarment lists. In addition, Labor Ready must establish a system for remedying prevailing wage violations in a timely fashion, including through payment of back wages to affected workers, or face considerable fines.
“This settlement is simply groundbreaking in its scope and will help to ensure that workers across the country are protected from wage theft,” said James W. Versocki of Archer, Byington, Glennon & Levine, LLP, a labor law firm in Melville, N.Y. that represents construction trade unions and referred the case to the Attorney General's office. “We are thankful that the Attorney General and the Labor Bureau saw the merit of this referral and turned a local problem into a national solution; this type of innovative approach to law enforcement is a model that should be emulated.”
In a joint statement, workers Lance and Lloyd Brown said, “Our family believes in hard work. But no matter how hard you work, it’s difficult to keep up with expenses and take proper care of our family, especially in these tough times. The fact that we got paid just a fraction of the salary of others who did exactly the same work is insulting and unfair. We are very grateful that Attorney General Schneiderman is taking on the tough fights to protect the wages we deserve for our hard work”.
The case was handled by Assistant Attorney General Haeya Yim, Labor Bureau Section Chief Andrew Elmore, and Bureau Chief Terri Gerstein. The Executive Deputy Attorney General for Social Justice is Alvin Bragg.