City contractor owed $241,000 in back pay
A Denver city contractor made $241,000 in back payments to nearly 100 workers after a probe that was part of the city auditor’s ongoing efforts to enforce prevailing wage laws.
Auditor Timothy O’Brien said in a news release that his office discovered Nelson Pipeline Constructors underpaid employees due to a classification error. The business is a subcontractor on the Beeler Park construction project in the Stapleton neighborhood and, O’Brien says, didn’t realize it was covered by Denver’s prevailing wage laws.
“The employees owed back pay were done a disservice by not receiving their full wages on time,” O’Brien said in a written statement. “But with strict accountability measures in place, we can find these errors and make it right as quickly as possible.”
A city wage investigator discovered the discrepancy during a routine visit to the construction site. Once notified, Nelson Pipeline Contractors called a meeting where 91 workers could collect their back pay.
“Nelson Pipeline did everything it could to rectify the underpayment,” O’Brien’s statement said.
The Denver Auditor’s Office says since the city’s prevailing wage ordinances were passed in the 1950s, it has been responsible for overseeing contracts to ensure workers are properly classified and compensated. When a worker’s wages fall below the legal wage, the auditor’s office says it collects the difference and distributes back pay.
The prevailing wage ordinance requires that contractors and subcontractors on public projects, as well as some providers of city contract services such as janitorial work, pay the same wages to workers who perform the same jobs. The Career Service Board sets the rates for each job classification, working from federal guidelines.
Denver’s measure mirrors a federal law that has existed for even longer.
Though some contend that such laws are giveaways to unions, supporters argue that they result in livable wages for workers on public projects because all bidders must factor in the same labor costs.