Union tradesmen rally to fight rat Texas contractor
O’Fallon, Mo. — Hundreds of building trades members, public officials and community supporters fought back Saturday, marching on a 262-unit apartment complex project being built with local and state tax dollars while violating prevailing wage and state and federal tax laws.
Protestors marched with signs touting fair wages and fair tax payments, and giant rats marked the way, as marchers stretched more than a mile between Bryan Road and Lake Saint Louis Boulevard in St. Charles County.
Duo Mark, the Texas-based contractor, is using local and state tax dollars to build the project, yet pays substandard wages and benefits and is known for hiring illegal immigrants, said Carpenters’ District Council Director of Organizing Tom Heinsz, who organized the rally.
“Don’t be surprised if there aren’t some people out there on that job working for food,” Heinsz said. “There’s nothing traceable. They don’t have to submit certified payroll records.”
The project is supported by the Missouri Housing and Development Corporation and the Industrial Development Authority, also known as the St. Charles County Economic Development Center, which sold local revenue bonds to finance the project, Heinsz said.
Heinsz said the Carpenters’ Union has filmed videotapes of vans and panel trucks delivering truckloads of Mexican workers to the site. In 1999, local unions had similar problems on an apartment development on Central School Road and Hwy. 94 in Harvester.
“We complained that something needed to be done to stop the use of our tax dollars for projects that pay substandard wages, but so far, Greg Prestemon, president of the Economic Development Center, has not come up with an answer,” Heinsz said. “There are no rules because the local and state taxing authorities are not enforcing the law. When they get a contract from MHDC, they get the funding, but there is no prevailing wage or certified payroll required. There should be certified payroll and prevailing wage requirements in these contracts.”
St. Charles County Councilman Joe Brazil said the council had urged the EDC to stop financing projects that don’t honor prevailing wages laws.
“The county gave about $57,000 to the EDC, but it does no good for economic development by using out-of-state contractors with employees whose money goes right back to Mexico,” Brazil said. “They don’t use a local workforce or local suppliers. You shouldn’t do that when you’re using tax dollars.”
“It’s a mess out here,” said Steve Bailey, a business representative with Bricklayers Local 1.
“The same thing happened before in Wentzville (near Peine Road), and we had some workers admit that they were paid in cash every Friday. They get no benefits, pay no taxes and leave the country.”
Rick Griffin, an organizer with the Laborers’ Union, said the job was affecting many laborers.
“We have guys out of work who could be doing these jobs,” Griffin said. “I just wish the government would stop letting out-of-state builders get by with this stuff.”
Heinsz said the magnitude of violations coming from Texas contractors is almost overwhelming. The federal government doesn’t seem to care about taxing or bringing in the Immigration Service to prevent it, he said.
“I heard a recent report that there were 9 million 1099s (tax forms for independent contractors) that were mailed to Mexico last year. The report said the government figured 7 million of those had addresses and Social Security numbers that were estimated to be bogus,” Heinsz said. “It’s phenomenal what’s going on and nobody wants to touch it. This job ultimately affects 16,000 carpenters.”
Heinsz said most of the site work at the job was performed by union tradesmen, but there are very few union construction workers at the site now.
“Are these (construction) jobs the jobs George Bush says nobody wants?” Heinsz asked. “People in St. Louis and St. Charles County want these jobs.”
At a recent meeting, the O’Fallon Board of Alderman agreed to consider an ordinance enforcing payment of prevailing wage on public projects within the city.
O’Fallon Alderman Jimmy Mitchell said, “I do not want to see any work go to a company from Texas with employees from Texas when we have local people out of work. This project is taking jobs from our local work force, taxes from our city and purchases for materials away from our local companies. As a city, we need to make sure that all ordinances are in place to prevent this from happening in the future.”
Heinsz said the rally was thrown together quickly, but he was pleased with the turnout. He said more than 500 protestors joined in the rally.
“It wasn’t just Tom Heinsz and the Carpenters,” he said. “There were other trades out there, and I was very, very happy that all the trades were able to get together and prove a point — that we don’t need this in our communities.”
At the St. Charles County Council meeting Monday, Council President Doug Funderburk pushed for payment of prevailing wages and certified payroll requirements for those receiving IDA bonds.
Funderburk told the IDA that he wanted the problem to stop and language in the contracts to protect the St. Charles County taxpayers.
“This will help make the local contractors competitive,” Heinsz said. “On this job, there was no prevailing wage, no taxes paid and we had nothing to go back on. If they were paying the prevailing wage, we wouldn’t be able to have the picket there.”
Courtesy of the St. Louis Labor Tribune
Dated: December 22, 2005