He urged support for the Employee
Misclassification Prevention Act, which was introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown
(D-Ohio) and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.).
A Maryland SMACNA member
announced the group’s support for a pair of bills introduced in the U.S.
House and Senate.
Edward Hershon of Stromberg
Metal Works of Beltsville, Md., recently spoke at a press conference at the U.S.
Capitol in Washington, D.C. He urged support for the Employee Misclassification
Prevention Act, which was introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep.
Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.).
“Ethical contractors are
increasingly forced to compete in the private and public market against
unlawful, unethical companies that deliberately misclassify workers as
independent contractors to gain an unfair competitive advantage,” Hershon said.
“The use of independent contractors in construction has nothing to do with
career enhancement or individual entrepreneurship, but rather everything to do
with unfair low-wage competition.”
Unethical contractors unfairly
cut their labor and administrative costs up to 30 percent by the unfair use of
independent contractors, which ends up costing the public money, Hershon said.
“Misclassification results in a
loss of more than $20 million per year to the Maryland unemployment trust fund
alone,” he added. “In 2009, I worked with then-Maryland secretary of labor, licensing
and regulation, Tom Perez, who is now assistant attorney general for civil
rights in the U.S. Department of Justice, in drafting legislation to combat
employee misclassification in the state of Maryland. We have had some success.
Yet, the federal government must take the lead. The legislation introduced
today will help the nation’s responsible businesses, and we hope to see it as
public law soon.”
