The Attorney General’s Fair Labor Division announced this week that the a Wilmington Construction company and its owner have been ordered to pay more than $472,000 in restitution and fines for failing to pay the prevailing wage, misclassifying workers as independent contractors and numerous other wage violations.
R. Humphrey, 63, is the owner of RPM Services, Inc. which performs street sweeping, paving and construction work on both public and private projects. In March 2009, the Attorney General’s office received complaints from former RPM employees recording the companies failure to pay its employees both the prevailing wage and for overtime. After the AG’s Fair Labor Division reviewed the available wage and hour records, investigators discovered that Humphrey and RPM failed to pay the prevailing wage rate and to employees working on public construction sites, failed to pay overtime for all hours worked among other record keeping violations.
In addition, Mr. Humphrey willfully failed to submit true and accurate certified payroll records to the awarding authorities and failed to submit any certified payroll records to the awarding authorities at 15 projects. In addition, he and his company failed to keep true and accurate payroll records and failed to furnish certified payroll records to the AG’s office upon their request for inspection. As a result, the Attorney General’s office cited Humphreys and RPM a total of $257,500 in fines for multiple wage and record keeping violations.
As a result of these violations, the Attorney General’s Office cited Mr. Humphrey Over $472,000 in restitution fines for failing to pay more than $104,000 in prevailing wages to 11 employees at 16 public construction projects and for failing to pay $105,000 in wages to 13 employees. Humphrey also was cited for willfully failing to pay more than $4,500 in overtime to five employees and willfully misclassifying two employees as independent contractors.
“All workers on public construction projects in the Commonwealth deserve to be paid what they are rightfully owed under the law,” said AG Coakley. “Any employer that has a state or municipal contract must abide by the rules, which includes properly classifying their employees in their records.”
To learn more about how to avoid incorrectly classifying workers as independent contractors, be sure to read Agency Checklists article on the Massachusetts Independent Contractor Law or to contact us here for more information.
