ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (KY, MI, OH, TN) has issued two opinions in recent months addressing whether contractors signatory to the General President's Project Maintenance Agreement (GPPMA) were liable for contributions to certain local funds.

In addition to the many employer mandates enacted by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), new efforts to assist the nation's unemployed have been introduced, potentially causing an increase in state-mandated unemployment taxes for employers.  Because employers are seemingly no longer responsible for former workers, many employers may not have realized the affect of this initiative on their respective companies.

Construction executive salaries increased an average of 4.6 percent in 2008, according to the latest Contractor Compensation Quarterly published by PAS, Inc.  Although last year's increase was not as significant as the 5.4 percent increases reported in 2006 and 2007, buying power for those executives who received raises still rose in 2008, as the inflation rate remained unchanged at zero percent.

On April 30, 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a shift in its workforce enforcement priorities from the prosecution of illegal aliens working in the United States to the prosecution of employers who knowingly hire them.  According to a fact sheet distributed by DHS, only 135 of 6,000 arrests related to worksite enforcement in 2008 were employers.  As a result, DHS issued new guidelines to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with instructions to immediately "focus its resources in the worksite enforcement program on the criminal prosecution of employers who knowingly hire illegal workers in order to target the root cause of illegal immigration." 

The National Labor Relations Board has held that Laborers Local 79 violated the National Labor Relations Act when it threatened a real estate developer that it would picket and "shut down" the developer's job site unless demolition work was performed by a union contractor. 

The cost of construction-industry collective bargaining agreement (CBA) terms and conditions as a percentage of wages and fringes was unchanged in 2008 at 6.4 percent, according to the Construction Labor Research Council's (CLRC) latest Cost of Terms and Conditions in Collective Bargaining Agreements report.  The dollar cost of these items increased, as the cost of many contract terms is directly related to wage rates, which increased. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a collective bargaining agreement that "clearly and unmistakably" requires union members to arbitrate claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) is enforceable as a matter of federal law.  The case is 14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett, 129 S.Ct. 1456 (April 1, 2009).

The ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ Labor and Employment Law Council - a network of labor lawyers who represent ºÚÁϲ»´òìÈ members and chapters - held its 25th Annual Construction Labor Law Symposium on April 24 in Washington, D.C.

The federal government has agreed to even further delay implementation of the E-Verify rule for federal contractors.  Contracts and solicitations issued prior to June 30, 2009, will not contain the mandate.  Click here for the Federal Register notice.

On April 3, 2009, employers were required to begin using a new I-9 form to verify the employment eligibility of newly hired employees and employees with expiring employment authorizations, according to the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).  The new form is available for downloading on the USCIS Web site.