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Saw this article from the Wall Street Journal. Apparently the Labor Department is going after Residential Homebuilders for overtime and minimum wage violations, which to me sounds like they are really targeting the sub-contractors and their status of sub-contractors.
Sounds like a political witch hunt to me. Most homebuilders use sub-contractors not employees to do the trades, I wonder if they are hoping to snare sub-contractors that do a large portion of their business with one home-builder as “employees” not sub-contractors.
The Leading Builders of America, an association of 19 major home builders, called the document demands overly broad and said the inquiry was “especially troubling given that no issues have been identified to warrant an investigation.”
“These demands could require significant resources and thousands of hours of work,” the association said in a statement.
The last line in the article I think sums the whole article up:
Many construction unions have urged the Labor Department to crack down on wage violations in part to embarrass nonunion contractors that unions hope to organize.
I am really curious on how the Builders Association of the Twin Cities (BATC) and the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) will respond to this.
Related articles
- Labor Department probing big US homebuilders (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- U.S. Hits Builders With Pay Probe (online.wsj.com)
