BY WALTER ELLIOTT
NEWARK – The New Jersey Department of Labor’s three-year crackdown on wage and contract violations have directly stopped work at one Newark construction site, indirectly halted work at a second and fined a Newark-based contractor on violations at two out-of-Local Talk area sites.
Investigators from the DOL’s Division of Wage and Hour and Contract Compliance, for example, had halted United Demo LLC’s work here at 428-444 Ferry St. May 21. United was hired to gut and demolish one of the five former Ballantine Brewery buildings here this summer in preparation for a new mixed-use residential and commercial-retail building.
The Wage and Hour inspectors said that they had found United, of Linden, “failing to pay overtime, unpaid wages/late payment, record – Earned Sick Leave, failing to properly classify employees and improper classification of construction workers.”
The NJDOL division fined United $50,234.88: $4,077.16 in back wages, $407.72 in fees and $45,750 in penalties.
United Demo’s July 21 suspension was near the end of a three-year period, going back to July 2019, where the Wage and Hour and Contract Compliance Division had exercised 70 stop work orders on private and public projects among 16 counties plus for one statewide project.
The United Demo/Ballentine project stop work order here, indeed, may have been the only one listed by the labor department in Essex County. Essex is co-ranked 12th with Cumberland, Gloucester, Morris, Salem and “Statewide” in having one stop work order each.
Hudson and Ocean topped the 16 county rankings with 10 orders each according to the department’s Aug. 17 press release. Middlesex and Monmouth are co-ranked third at eight each, Mercer at seven, Bergen and Camden sixth at six each, Burlington and Hunterdon eighth at three each and Passaic and Union at two each.
The DOL release was promoting its increased vigilance of wage and classification violations during those 37 months. The department credited Gov. Phil Murphy’s signing either State Legislature-approved ordinances and/or issuing executive orders that increased DOL investigators’ powers.
The increased powers, for example, allows DOL investigators to halt work at a project or a business “when an initial investigation finds evidence that the employer has violated any state wage, benefit or tax laws.”
Investigators, prior to July 2019, could only issue stop work orders when an employer had accumulated a history of violations – which opened a window of escape for employers.
A Sept. 15, 2021 stop work order indirectly halted a Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission project here along Newark Bay.
The PVSC had hired general contractor Railroad-Posillico Joint Venture LLC, of Paterson to fabricate reinforced steel cages for their wastewater treatment plant here. Railroad-Posillico then subcontracted that actual work to Men of Steel, of Bensalem, Pa.
NJDOL inspectors, however, found Men of Steel had misclassified its employees and had violated the state’s prevailing wage law. The department cited a March 2019 statute where “off-site fabrication of components to be used in public works projects are covered by prevailing wage laws.”
A construction company working out of Newark had work halted at two of its client’s project sites in Mercer and Middlesex counties April 28, 2021, after a tipoff by its workers.
Cunha’s Construction workers told Wage and Hour inspectors that the company was paying them off the books while at the BAPS temples in Robbinsville and Edison.
The inspectors verified on the sites that the employees were being paid in cash. The Roslyn Heights, N.Y.-headquartered Cunha was found to have had eight prior judgments on back wages and penalties going back to 2007.
The DOL suspended Cunha-Newark from present and future New Jersey projects until it had paid the back wages and put its Robbinsville and Edison site workers on its records. The department’s Aug. 17 release noted that most of the 71 stop work orders “are typically resolved in a few days and are often resolved on the spot when the order is delivered to a business.”
Both BAPS are open for worship although construction at Robbinsville on what will be “the world’s largest Hindu temple” continues.
Demolition of the six-floor former Ballentine building at 428-444 Ferry is to be completed later this summer. “The Ballentine” – a six-story 280-residential-unit with 2,652 square feet of street-level retail space – is to take up space there and on the former parking lot at 74-82 Freeman St. in a year’s time.
