First ruling of its kind narrows who gets paid when contractors break the rules
Illinois appellate court strips $526,500 from union's misclassification win, ruling only workers – not unions – can collect statutory damages under state law.
A bricklayers' union just watched a six-figure damages award vanish on appeal, even after the trial court entered a default judgment as a sanction against the contractor for ignoring discovery.
On May 20, 2026, the Illinois Appellate Court ruled that unions and other interested parties cannot collect statutory damages or attorney fees under section 60 of the Illinois Employee Classification Act. That right belongs only to the workers whose rights were actually violated.
The decision is the first published opinion on the question. It resets how worker misclassification claims will be prosecuted across Illinois.
Here is the story. In 2020, Administrative District Council 1, a union representing masonry workers, sued Brickster Inc. and its owner Grzegorz Przada. The union alleged the company misclassified between 30 and 50 workers as independent contractors between 2018 and 2022, denying them overtime and other rights, avoiding taxes, and gaining an unfair edge over law-abiding contractors who paid into union benefit funds. The union sued as an interested party under the Act.
Brickster and Przada stopped engaging with the case. In March 2023, the Cook County Circuit Court entered a default judgment as a sanction, finding the defendants had...
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