The U.S. Department of Labor's recently announced recovery of $125,000 in back wages for an Iowa-based subcontractor's 34 workers is part of keeping wages steady, a wage and hour division director said in news release.
Ja-Ra Inc., which does business as AJ Plumbing in Des Moines, was found to have paid workers the rate for pipe layers when they were doing plumbing work on a contract U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development apartment project, according to DOL's Feb. 17 news release. Getting the subcontractor to pay the correct wages helps keep overall local wages where they should be, Wage and Hour Division District Director Marcy Boldman, based in Des Moines, said.
"Enforcement of prevailing wage laws ensures that federal contracting does not depress local wages, that workers receive the wages they are due and that responsible, law-abiding contractors are able to compete for federal contracts," Boldman said. "Federal contractors must be certain that they and their subcontractors pay employees working on federal projects the accurate prevailing wage rates and fringe benefits and correctly calculate all pay due. The Wage and Hour Division will remain vigilant in its enforcement of prevailing wage laws."
The amount covered by DOL was in overtime pay and prevailing wages to 27 of 34 plumbers. AJ Plumbing agreed to comply in the future.
AJ Plumbing President Jarod Smith has since told the Des Moines Register that DOL's misclassification allegation was unfair and that the workers had been "tickled to death" to be paid $32.50 an hour.
Smith said in the newspaper's Friday, Feb. 18 article that the workers would have made even less had they been first-year union apprentices.
"The classification is, anyone who touches a pipe is a plumber," Smith said in the article. "And the union helps [the Department of Labor] with classification. The union never wants to help a non-union plumbing company. Anything that they say or do, 100%, would be what they want. They think everybody should be union."
In the same article, Plumbers and Steamfitters Local Union 33 Business Manager Andy Roberts confirmed the union helped in DOL's investigation after an organizer found out AJ Plumbing workers weren't earning the prevailing rate for plumbing jobs.
"We're always out there protecting the prevailing wage laws," Roberts said.
DOL's news release did not mention the union's assistance.
