A Victory for California Labor Law, and Others

Los Angeles, CAThe failure of a contactor to pay fair wages and overtime has resulted in a nearly quarter-million dollar settlement to laborers in California and two other states, upholding California labor law regulations and the California labor code. With a nod to California state labor laws and those of other states, Building Materials Holding Corp. will pay $242,301 to 85 residential construction workers in California, Nevada and Arizona.

Pablo Nunez is one such worker. A carpenter by trade, he told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday that he was accustomed to working 10-hour shifts—sometimes six days a week—on various home build sites throughout Southern California. As for being paid overtime, which is required according to California labor employment law, such a luxury was as much a rarity as the presence of building inspectors.

Jose Ivan Carpio is another plaintiff who told the newspaper he worked for three years for the defendant building condos in Orange County, earning about $14 per hour during the good times. Even then, there was no overtime—in spite of working 10-hour days and often toiling Saturdays.

Carpio said that when the economy slowed his pay was cut to $10 per hour and his hours reduced. He was eventually laid off and is now working irregularly, living off savings to supplement his now meager income.

Even when times were better, he says, "we helped this company make a lot of money, but we saw very little of it."

Nunez: "When times are good, the companies are pressuring you to work more and more hours," the 38-year-old skilled carpenter told the Los Angeles Times. "But they never want to pay you what your work is truly worth."

A recent academic survey of more than 4,000 low-wage workers in LA, New York and Chicago found that employees in home construction and other industries are routinely victimized.

Labor activists told the LA Times that wage fraud was prevalent even when the economy was booming. Once the bottom fell out, it got even worse—and the Times reports that the number of federal enforcement inspectors declined by almost a third between 1980 and 2007.

The successful federal lawsuit, that involved laborers in California and thus helped to uphold California labor laws, was brought with the help of the Laborers' International Union of North America, which alleged the defendant and its subsidiaries systematically failed to pay employees for hours worked, did not provide overtime or breaks and kept workers off the clock while they traveled between job sites and waited for materials to arrive.

Building Materials Holding Corporation, the defendant, denied the allegations but agreed to the settlement nonetheless.