A Des Moines contractor will pay about $125,000 after federal investigators accused the company of misclassifying workers and failing to pay them overtime.
In a settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor, AJ Plumbing agreed to pay $106,000 to 34 workers who allegedly received less pay than a federal minimum standard. The settlement comes three weeks after the company agreed to pay workers $19,000 for failing to follow the federal overtime law.
The allegations in both cases stem from its work on The Nexus at Gray's Landing, an apartment complex south of Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway. Because the project received federal funding under the National Housing Act, contractors had to follow the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires companies to pay the official prevailing wage on a job.
The required rate depends on what type of job a worker does. Department of Labor investigators concluded that AJ Plumbing managers counted workers as pipe layers when they should have been counted as contractors.
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AJ Plumbing President Jarod Smith told the Des Moines Register that he felt the misclassification allegation was unfair.
Because his company was brought in as a subcontractor to install plumbing, he said, the investigators determined that he had to pay everybody at the minimum plumber's rate, around $40 an hour. He said he had a large team of laborers who weren't trained to do plumbing...
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