ADELANTO – A subcontractor, whose payments have been withheld for failing to pay prevailing wages to janitorial workers at the Adelanto Detention Center Expansion Project, is currently being investigated by various agencies, a county official told the Bee.
Baron Services, which performed construction cleanup at the site, allegedly failed to pay six low-income union workers prevailing wages and, according to San Bernardino County Public Information Officer David Wert, is now being investigated by “non-county agencies.”
“About a month ago, the county became aware of allegations that prevailing wages were not being paid to Baron Services’ employees, and the county’s labor compliance consultant launched an inquiry into the allegations,” Wert told the Bee by email.
Labor Compliance Providers, a state-approved labor compliance company, discovered prevailing wage violations with the subcontractor and issued a notice of withholding to the general contractor, Lydig Construction. Lydig then withheld contract payments to Baron, leading to the withdrawal of its workers from the construction site.
However, the situation is not expected to cause any delays to the completion of the expansion project, Wert said. “There is a mix of union and non-union workers at the site, so not everyone, and perhaps no one, will be affected by any labor actions.”
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Wert said the county also is “aware of ongoing investigations by other public agencies” over previous labor violations for which the subcontractor is allegedly responsible.
In addition to prevailing wage violations, Baron Services has created another concern for county officials, such as the possibility of hiring ex-convicts to work at the Adelanto project site – an active county prison.
“The county was surprised because a lot of the people, maybe not in this case … but some of the people that he hires are ex-convicts,” James Reed, the administrator for Labor Compliance Providers, told the Bee.
Reed said that his company has a “long history” with Baron Services that began in 2005, when they requested certified payroll records from Jeff Baron, the company’s president, for janitorial work being performed on a high school campus in Lancaster.
“They refused to give them to us, and so they were claiming that they were exempt from the prevailing wages because they were doing janitorial work,” Reed said. “If you’re on a publicly-funded construction site, you have to pay state prevailing wages for the craft that is designated to do that cleanup work.”
Reed said that a state hearing officer decided Baron was required to pay prevailing wages in that case, and that “he’s had several civil wage and penalty assessments against him,” including a case pending by the Riverside County District Attorney.
“They did a search warrant and took most all of his computers out of his (Baron’s) office and his home a couple of years ago, and they’ve been doing an ongoing investigation with the Employment Development Department and the Department of Insurance,” Reed said.
For the Adelanto jail project, Baron was paying his employees $10 an hour for their work, explaining they were simply janitors. But according to Reed, the state does not recognize janitors as a pubic works class.
“First of all, the rate is much higher than that for that labor group,” Reed said. “It’s a group form (of) labor that does construction cleanup, and I’m guessing with all the benefits – pension, health and welfare, vacation and all that – it’s probably a total package of $47 (an hour).”
According to Reed, the state can prohibit Baron from submitting public bids, and the Contractors State License Board could revoke his license, but enforcement of prevailing wages is a slippery deal.
“He’ll slip under the radar a lot of times because he is a second- or third-tier sub (contractor), so you don’t always know by getting the sub list from the general that he’s on a job,” Reed said. “It just so happens that we were monitoring this job, and we know his history … so he continues to do business until at some point in time, I guess, it gets bad enough.”
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The Chino-based contractor of janitorial services only recently joined Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877, but now faces a possible $56,000 penalty in contract violations for failing to pay state wages.
“I know that (the workers) could potentially have a lot of money coming to them. That’s what our notice for withholding is – it’s for wages,” Reed said. “(Baron) can request a hearing, and I know he doesn’t want to go to a hearing because we’ve done that before with him – and he knows he’s on the losing end of the deal there.”
A notice to withhold payments to a contractor is a civil penalty brought against an employer for failing to pay the prevailing wage to employees while performing public work. But more importantly, it is an attempt to recover and satisfy the wage claim (Calif. Labor Code Section 1771.6).
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Dave Stilwell, assistant to the president of SEIU Local 1877, is upset that his members are getting hit twice: first, being paid too low; and second, getting laid off.
“So all of the problems of this thing are falling on our members, who are a bunch of poor working folks from San Bernardino County,” Stilwell told the Bee in an earlier interview. “And our employer can’t get paid, so he can’t pay them … And all of these wages they say should have been going to our members – we’re not getting them anyway. So the janitors are getting the short end of the stick out of this whole deal here.”
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The State of California and the County of San Bernardino require its contractors to pay prevailing wages for all public works construction projects and “will not tolerate underpayment of wages to employees of the contractors,” Wert told the Bee.
To help ease crowding at jails throughout the county, the ‘Adelanto Detention Center Expansion Project’ consists of a 1,392-bed expansion at an approximate cost of $121 million to the county, with the state’s share up to $100 million – according to the Aug. 22 update for the state’s AB 900 Jail Construction Financing Program. Construction began in February 2011 and completion is anticipated in January 2014.
The Adelanto Sheriff’s Department County Jail is located at 9438 Commerce Way in Adelanto. For more information, visit cms.sbcounty.gov/sheriff.
