Workers win right to back pay

A prominent Snohomish County drywall contractor has settled a class-action lawsuit brought by former workers who alleged they were stiffed out of thousands of dollars in wages.

Artistic Drywall Textures, which will pay up to $635,000, is the first drywall contractor to be successfully targeted by the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, District Council 5, in Seattle. Most settlements will be less than $3,000 per worker, depending on the project and number of hours worked.

"This sends a signal," said Jeff Kelley, the union's organizing director.

For years, the union has recruited Latino construction workers — many of them illegal immigrants — and helped them file claims for back pay because, it says, city and state agencies aren't holding employers accountable for prevailing wages, overtime and worker injuries.

Illegal immigrants are reluctant to file wage or injury claims because of the risk of losing their jobs or being deported, the union says.

Under the settlement — which isn't final without a judge's approval — Artistic Drywall admits no wrongdoing.

Michael Killeen, the contractor's attorney, says all Artistic Drywall workers must verify their hours are correct before they receive their paychecks.

He said Artistic Drywall settled because it didn't want to bear the continued expense of fighting the lawsuit, which was filed in 2006 and was granted class certification. Before the court granted the lawsuit class-action status, the firm collected declarations from more than 100 workers who said they had been paid correctly, Killeen said.

About 640 current and former workers of Artistic Drywall are eligible for back pay under the settlement, said attorney David Mark, who represented two former workers.

"It's a great example of unions helping workers who are not union yet," Mark said. "When they get cheated, it hurts everyone. It makes it really hard for companies that abide by the law to bid on projects."

The construction industry employs the most illegal immigrants of any major industry, and the workers are concentrated in certain occupations, such as painters, roofers and drywall tapers, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C. The PHC is a nonpartisan research organization supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

60-hour weeks

Odriel Garcia said that last year he was working 60-hour weeks back to back, spackling and sanding wallboard at a public-housing project in Seattle for Artistic Drywall.

Plymouth Housing Group is responsible for the project, at Second Avenue and Stewart Street.

Garcia, who reckoned he was underpaid by $5,000, said he stayed on the job because, like many other Latino construction workers, he doesn't have a lot of savings and sends whatever money he can to his family in Mexico.

But this was, in a sense, a sting operation; Garcia is a bilingual union organizer.

For two months he kept a record of the hours he worked, and he encouraged his fellow workers to do the same. Then he quit.

Garcia and Luis Guerrero, a fellow union member, sued the contractor, alleging that Artistic Drywall Textures kept false and inaccurate payrolls, underreporting the hours workers put in on job sites.

By underreporting these hours to city officials, Artistic Drywall avoided having to pay workers overtime, the workers alleged. The company also failed to pay the correct prevailing wage for the type of work workers were doing, the workers said.

Rodger Jones, an inspector for the state Department of Labor and Industries, told the court he spends most of his time auditing contractors in response to workers' claims they weren't paid overtime — and that many cases arise where employers pay workers by the square foot, not by the hour.

Piece-rate work

Paying on a piece rate is common and legal, but even piece-rate workers are entitled to overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours in a week. "Piece workers in construction are much more likely to work over 40 hours per week than hourly employees because of the ability of a skilled individual to increase their earnings," Jones said in a statement.

The failure of employers to pay overtime on piece-rate work "continues to be a widespread problem, with employees and employers alike ill-informed, and the vast amount of violations unreported."

The union made similar allegations last year against Ketchikan Drywall Services, which was contracted by the Low Income Housing Institute to do work at Denny Park Apartments, a project supported by a city of Seattle loan. Ketchikan denied wrongdoing, and no settlement was reached.

The city asked the developer to account for apparent overtime and prevailing-wage violations for dozens of workers, most of them Latino.

Adrienne Quinn, director of the city's Office of Housing, said in an interview last year that there was no hard evidence of wrongdoing — just sloppy record-keeping.

Quinn said she planned to require more monitoring of projects supported by the city.

"We need some independent investigation," she said. "We can't take documents, even ones signed under penalty of perjury, at face value."

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com