Minnesota Nonprofit Tackles Prevailing-Wage Violations

Tuesday, February 23, 2016 | 0

A nonprofit group that is a partnership between contractors and building-trades unions is working to make sure that prevailing wage and bidding laws are followed on public projects throughout Minnesota.

Fair Contracting Foundation of Minnesota has helped recover nearly $1 million in wages and benefits.

The St. Paul-based Fair Contracting Foundation of Minnesota, founded about five years ago, has helped recover nearly $1 million in wages and benefits, Workday Minnesota reported.

Foundation investigators look for violations of prevailing-wage laws and file complaints as needed. The federal government adopted wage standards for taxpayer-funded construction projects in 1931; states including Minnesota and many local governments have enacted similar laws.

Mike Wilde, the Fair Contracting Foundation’s executive director, said that without wage laws, governments would simply go with the lowest bidder. The quality and safety of public projects would suffer as a result, he said.

Violations of the prevailing-wage law range from failure to pay the appropriate wage or overtime to fraudulently reporting hours and paying cash under the table.

Wilde told Workday Minnesota that he believes prevailing-wage violations occur most frequently in local school districts, where staff members lack the experience or resources to enforce the law.

The foundation is also working on issues regarding the bidding process for public projects. While laws typically call for projects to be awarded to the “lowest responsible bidder,” what constitutes a responsible bidder is often poorly defined, Wilde said.

To help address the issue, the Minnesota legislature in 2014 passed the Responsible Contractor Law, requiring bidders on public projects to pledge in writing that they’ll comply with requirements such as paying the prevailing wage and providing workers’ compensation to employees.