I called dol and the lady said , that the investigator for the federal building that I was working in contacted the general contractor and she is seeing what the contract says that I was working under . How does that matter isn't it suppose to be set in stone what the rate I should be getting paid? I hope my boss didn't find a loop hole. I asked a laborer that was on the same jobs I was on and he said he was getting paid 50ph. Even if I was under a electrical apprentice that would be 35ph so 22 ph is deff short any way u look at it. I don't see what the contract has to do with it.im going to call in a week to see if theirs any progress
I'm a little late to the thread, but we do run PW jobs from time to time.
First, on the accounting method, there
may be nothing nefarious here. I once worked for a Fortune 500 company, and at my location it was common to book the non-exempt hours as strictly straight time. So a Saturday shift, which normally was time and a half, would be on the time sheet as 12 straight time hours; 8 for the regular time and 4 for the overtime.
If your job was federal, then state prevailing wage normally
does not apply, the Davis-Bacon wage rates apply. For NYC it looks like the base wage for electricians is $51.00/hr with fringes at $23.67. There is no separation into journeyman, apprentice, or anything else. There is a catagory for "Jobbing and maintenance and repair work" which is at $25.30 and $15.13 respectively.
Out of the fringe portion ONLY your employer is allowed to take a credit for things like employer provided health insurance, paid holidays, paid vacation, paid sick or personal days or paid time for off-hours training. He would do this by summing all those hours, calculating the value, and then dividing by the number of work hours in the year (usually 2,080) to get the credit per hour. If you had 10 days paid vacation, 4 sick or personal days and 8 paid holidays per year that would be 176 hours. At $14 per hour the value would be $2,464. Divided by 2,080 that would be $1.85 per hour (rounded). So he could take that as a credit against the $23.67 and the net fringes would be $21.82. The hourly rate that should show up in your pay stub is a total of $72.82, or $38.58 if your job classification was under the "Jobbing" category.
On the "contract" issue, the Feds calculate the Davis-Bacon based on the local union contracts. Electricians in NYC don't get paid the same as electricians in Billings, Montana. This is probably what the DOL rep was referring to. Now that the DOL is involved, you should check in once a week or so to make sure things are moving along. The case should be assigned to an investigator. Find out who that is and try to get their contact information. Drop them an e-mail once a week asking for an update. This is the "squeaky wheel" theory of regulatory enforcement. If you don't hear from them in month, find out who their supervisor is and drop him or her a line. The key to a favorable outcome (for you!) is persistence.
