Connecticut newspaper The Stamford Advocate reported that subcontractor John Dosky, owner of American Building Group LLC, was recently arrested by Connecticut State Police for wage theft violations against three brothers, one of whom died from a fall while working for him. Dosky was charged with three felony counts of “failure to pay wages” for owing the brothers almost $8,000 in unpaid wages. The Department of Labor is also taking action against his company for misclassifying these and other employees as independent contractors, a practice known as payroll fraud.
The death occurred in October after 36-year-old Javiar Salinas fell more than 50 feet at the Chelsea Piers sports complex construction site in Stamford. An article in The Danbury News-Times reported that Salinas’ estate is filing suit against each of his employers, including the developers (Chelsea Piers Connecticut LLC and Stamford Exit 9 LLC), contractor (Merritt Contractors Inc), subcontractor (AP Construction), and the sub-sub contractor (Dosky’s company, American Building LLC), because Salinas was not wearing a safety harness when he climbed to the roof that day, allowing a gust of wind to knock him off of the roof.
After the accident, Javiar’s brothers went to the Department of Labor to seek help in collecting Read more » about Contractor Charged with Felony Wage Theft Following Death of Worker
California’s Department of Industrial Relations, the Employment Development Department, Contractor's State Licensing Board, Board of Equalization, the Bureau of Automotive Repair, and other California state agencies have teamed up to create the Labor Enforcement Task Force (LETF), which will be established effective January 1. This will be the newest effort to battle the underground economy where workers are not given their legal rights or wages, and to level the playing field for businesses who uphold the law.
On July 13, 
The US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) has a website with specific information about the issue of worker misclassification, also known as payroll fraud, and the measures being taken by each state to abolish it. The website includes links to each Memorandum of Understanding which has been signed between the WHD and specific states’ Departments of Labor and Industry. These agreements were created to promote compliance with laws already in existence within the states and to aid in communicating with employers and employees through training materials and coordinated enforcement actions in order to “protect the wages of America's workforce”. Only eleven states have signed such agreements at this time.
According to 
Governor Jerry Brown recently signed two new bills into law that will address the misclassification and wage theft issues in a much stronger fashion. According to an Advisory received by Construction Citizen and 
Some employers who have been paying employees as independent contractors have now been given a chance to reclassify these workers and move forward without paying the penalties and interest which they previously would have owed for payroll taxes not collected. In an effort to stop the widespread practice of payroll fraud in the United States, the Internal Revenue Service has offered a new program under which companies who qualify may voluntarily correct the way they pay their workers, and move forward with a clean slate.
On Thursday, October 6, 
Last week, Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis and IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman signed a “memorandum of understanding” between the US Department of Labor and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The agreement is part of a continued effort to put and end to the practice by unethical employers of misclassifying their employees as independent contractors in order to avoid paying workers’ compensation insurance fees, overtime pay, federal payroll taxes and unemployment insurance for those workers.
