Morgan State University Construction Workers Settle Wage Theft Case
Construction laborers performing carpentry work on a new public safety building at Morgan State University successfully resolved a wage theft case against Commercial Construction LLC and Mount Everest Construction Inc.
The construction workers alleged that Defendants failed to pay them required prevailing wages and misclassified them as independent contractors for the carpentry and drywall work they performed on a publicly-funded Morgan State University project in Baltimore City. The workers alleged violations of the Maryland Workplace Fraud Act, the Maryland Wage and Hour Law, the Maryland Wage Payment and Collection Law, and the Maryland Prevailing Wage Statute.
Maryland law has strong protections for construction workers at publicly-financed projects to make certain those workers are paid a fair wage and are appropriately classified as employees, not falsely classified as independent contractors. Employers often wrongly classify their employees as independent contractors to avoid paying workers all the wages they are owed. Maryland law also makes general contractors jointly liable for wage theft by their subcontractors.
The Case was filed in the Circuit Court of Maryland, Baltimore City.
Murphy Anderson attorneys Arlus Stephens, Mark Hanna, and Ricardo Perez worked on the case with attorneys David Rodwin and Amy Gellatly from the Public Justice Center in Baltimore serving as co-counsel.