Traffic & Transit
Light Rail Contractor Cited $800,000 For Unpaid Wages, Fines
L&I says the contractor failed to pay the correct wages to 37 employees working on the East Link Extension. One was owed nearly $100,000.
SEATTLE — The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) is citing a Tukwila contractor after it underpaid several dozen employees who had been working on the East Link light rail extension.
L&I says it was tipped off when an employee filed a complaint against Penhall Company in February 2019. After an investigation, L&I found that Penhall had avoided paying 37 employees the correct wage by classifying them as "laborers" when they should have been paid as surveyors. As laborers, they made $38.57 an hour, but should have gotten $58.69 per hour as surveyors.
As a result, between July 2017 and December 2019 those employees lost $648,609.68 in wages and interest. According to L&I, one employee worked so much in that time, he was owed nearly $100,000.
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“Workers should be paid what they’ve earned, and in this case the company didn’t pay the correct wage for the work these employees were doing,” said Jim Christensen, L&I’s Prevailing Wage Program manager.
The company has been fined a total $800,000, most of which will go to pay back the affected employees. The remaining $150,000 is in fines for failing to pay the prevailing wage and filling falsified payroll reports. L&I says it's the biggest citation their Prevailing Wage Program has issued in years.
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One reason the fine was so large was because of a recent state law. Passed in 2019, the law strengthened the state's existing Prevailing Wage Law, requiring businesses to pay interest on unpaid wages and bigger penalties for wage violations — both of which came into play in this case.
“The easiest way for contractors to avoid these citations is to simply follow the law. We have plenty of training and assistance to help with that,” Christensen said.
The East Link Extension is a $3.6 billion project to connect the Link Light Rail from Seattle to Bellevue. The primary contract on the project is Kiewit Corp.-Hoffman Construction. The light rail is expected to begin service to Bellevue sometime in 2023.
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