A Washington, D.C. federal administrative law judge ordered a cement company to pay back wages to an employee who was retaliated against for “assisting federal safety investigators during a site visit,” a March 7 news release from the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) states.
The March 1 decision comes after an MSHA investigation found that Continental Cement Company “paid the worker the hourly rate of a laborer on multiple days in March and April 2020 when she accompanied inspectors at the Hannibal mine, instead of the wages she should have received as a mobile equipment operator.” The news release explains that she would have been engaged in the mobile equipment operator work “had she not been acting as the miners’ representative.” Thus, Continental Cement “shortchanged the worker $388 in wages” because of the different rate of pay.
A miners’ representative is “an employee representative designated to accompany and provide information to MSHA inspectors during mine inspections.” According to the news release, “[u]nder the Mine Safety and Health Act, the miners’ representative shall ‘suffer no loss in pay’ for this work.”
The company “argued it did not have to pay the miner the higher wage since they were not actually operating mobile equipment,” but Administrative Law Judge William B. Moran “rejected this argument” and determined instead that the company’s “actions resulted in a loss in pay because of her miners’ representative...
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