A contractor for Digi-Key Electronics violated labor laws and was ordered to pay nearly $315,000 in back wages to construction workers on an expansion project in Thief River Falls, state officials announced Friday.
Digi-Key contractor ordered to pay construction workers $315,000 in back wages
State regulators determined that an Iowa concrete company under-compensated 70 workers.
June 20, 2020 at 12:27AM
The Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry (DLI) said its investigation revealed the back pay was owed to 70 subcontractor construction workers who toiled on Digi-Key's expansion worksite in 2018 and 2019.
The back wages paid ranged from less than $100 to more than $11,000 per person, state officials said in a statement.
DLI found that Digi-Key's Iowa-based subcontractor, Millennium Concrete, "committed violations, including misclassifying the work employees were performing and paying them lower prevailing-wage rates," DLI officials said. Millennium also failed to pay the required overtime rate to certain workers and made unauthorized deductions from workers' pay.
The state noted that Digi-Key Electronics cooperated with the state investigation. Millennium Concrete officials were not available for comment Friday.
"Violations of state prevailing-wage have a negative impact on the ability of industry competitors to fairly bid for work that advances the economic development of Minnesota," said DLI Commissioner Nancy Leppink in a statement. "We are committed to ensuring that workers are paid what they have rightly earned."
Nearly two years ago the Laborers' International Union of North America and the Fair Contracting Foundation complained to the state about labor violations, wage theft, the failure to provide workers' compensation to injured workers and whistleblower retaliation against Millennium workers on the Thief River Falls project. A DLI investigation ensued.
A separate investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission is still underway, said Kevin Pranis, the union's marketing manager. "It's been a whole saga," Pranis said.
The DLI investigation resulted in two sets of back wages being issued to workers. The first checks were issued about a year ago. A second set of checks went to affected workers starting a couple of months ago, Pranis said.
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