A Sustainable Workforce Starts With You

Worker Misclassification

Payroll fraud (also called worker misclassification and workplace fraud) is the illegal practice of designating an employee as a "1099 worker" or an independent contractor. Unscrupulous employers do this to avoid paying payroll taxes, unemployment tax, or workers’ compensation insurance and are therefore able to submit lower bids for projects, undercutting responsible contractors. Several states have already passed laws to penalize those who cheat workers and taxing agencies in this way.

Home builder and general contractor Reynaldo Orozco has been sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to repay $504,047 in unpaid employment tax for filing a false tax return...
A recent decision following an investigation by the New Orleans District Office Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of Labor tied a Louisiana general contractor to the...
Kim Bobo, founder and executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, talked with Construction Citizen blogger Jim Kollaer during her recent visit to Houston.  Kollaer asked...
Build a Better Texas is a collaborative effort of honest construction businesses, faith leaders, and advocates of fairness and safety who want to improve the construction industry...
According to a story last week in Syracuse.com, the online connection to The Post-Standard newspaper in Syracuse, New York, “The owners of a Pennsylvania construction company face...
Today was Tax Day for millions of Americans, but not for some in our industry.  The current situation with our broken immigration system and the smuggling of workers into the...
Last week the Texas House of Representatives Committee on Business & Industry heard testimony in Austin relating to House Bill 2989 which would establish the Workplace Fraud...
This morning a group of construction workers and supporters of the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center held a protest across from the site of a new discount store to demand...
We got this one from one of the friends of Construction Citizen, John Hinson in Dallas.Pennsylvania enacted a misclassification law last month and within a week, officials had...