The Infection Control Risk Assessment (ICRA) Program provides patient-focused training for Carpenters and other trades working in hospitals, medical facilities or other occupied spaces. Workers who attend the training learn about containing pathogens, controlling airflow and recognizing and properly disposing of hazardous materials. By learning how to keep hospital construction sites safe and infection-free, attendees gain skills that set them apart from the rest of the field.
We are proud to work with other trades to ensure safety across all spectrums of hospital construction and appreciate their ongoing commitment to patient and staff safety. The dedication of other crafts to excellence in healthcare construction is demonstrated by sending 3,467 of their members through the ICRA 8-Hour Awareness Training.
Sprinkler Fitters
Cement Finishers
Roofers
Insulators
Sheet Metal
Plumbers and Pipefitters
Electricians
Do you want to ensure infection control best practices are used by construction workers in upcoming renovation or construction projects at your healthcare facility? Contact Brad Murphy at 317-605-1386 or bmurphy@ikorcc.comfor a list of contractors in your area that use ICRA-trained staff.
Construction ICRA Best Practices is an innovative program that provides patient-focused training for Carpenters and other trades working in hospitals, medical facilities or other occupied spaces. This set of best practices helps prevent the spread of disease and infection during construction at healthcare facilities. ICRA instructors also offer training opportunities to healthcare facility staff.
https://www.cmwcarpenters.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/May-ICRA-newsblast.jpg400560IKORCC/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/CMWCarpenterslogoFIN.pngIKORCC2016-05-06 00:00:002019-06-24 04:21:38ICRA program continues to make hospital construction safer
Partnership description: The division and bureau signed a three-year Memorandum of Understanding intended to protect employees’ rights by preventing their misclassification as independent contractors or other non-employee statuses. The two agencies will provide clear, accurate and easy-to-access outreach to employers, employees, and other stakeholders; share resources and enhance enforcement by conducting coordinated investigations and sharing information consistent with applicable law.
Background: The division is working with the IRS and 28 other states to combat employee misclassification and to ensure that workers get the wages, benefits, and protections to which they are entitled. Mislabeling employees as independent contractors can deny them of basic rights such as minimum wage, overtime and a host of other benefits. Misclassification also reduces federal and state tax revenues, and prevents contributions to state unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation funds.
Quotes: “The Wage and Hour Division continues to attack this problem head on with a combination of a robust education and outreach campaign and a nationwide, data-driven, strategic enforcement across industries. Our goal is always to strive toward workplaces with decreased misclassification, increased compliance, and more workers receiving a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.”
Quote: “When corporations misclassify their workforce, they make it much more difficult for workers facing wage theft, civil rights abuse or other unfair treatment on the job. This agreement will create a new tool to help protect the rights of Oregon workers cheated on the job.”
/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/CMWCarpenterslogoFIN.png00IKORCC/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/CMWCarpenterslogoFIN.pngIKORCC2016-05-06 00:00:002019-06-24 04:23:11Agreement between U.S. Department of Labor, Oregon Bureau of Labor provides education, enforcement to protect workers from missclassification
Congratulations to our 40 2016 scholarship recipients! Each student received a $1,000 scholarship toward tuition, room and board, or books.
Twenty of the scholarships were awarded on high school grade point average (60%) and SAT or ACT scores (40%). The other twenty were selected by random in a drawing. This year’s applicants were evaluated by a team of college administrates at the Owens Community College in Perrysburg, Ohio.
Recipients are sons, daughters, and dependent children of members of the Indiana/Kentucky/Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights. The parent or guardian must be a member in good standing of IKORCC for at least one year. The son, daughter, or dependent child must be a high school graduating senior or be attending a college, university or trade school as a full-time student.
America is rife with complex plots by businesses to illegally dodge workers-comp premiums. The flourishing underground economy that exists in many urban centers adds more kindling to the fraud fire, especially in construction. FraudWire reached out to Matthew Capece, senior executive with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, for his thoughts. He’s been a specialist in employer payroll fraud in construction since 1989.
Workers compensation insurers have long dealt with premium-avoidance schemes. Among the ploys are lowballing workforce size and payroll, and misclassifying employees as independent contractors. How prevalent are premium scams in construction trades, and are any variations unique to construction?
Workers-compensation premium scams involving construction projects are alarmingly commonplace. They regularly occur on residential projects. We even find them on large commercial sites, schools, hospitals, high-rise condos and government jobs like military bases. Fraud has become standard operating procedure in a number of states, including Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. But it is happening all across the country.
The schemes vary in sophistication, but the growing practice is using subcontract labor brokers. For instance, interior-systems specialty subcontractors install metal studs, sheetrock and ceilings. They also provide supervision and, maybe, some hands-on labor.
The bulk of their labor comes from brokers. Yet the specialty subcontractor supervises and treats the labor brokers’ workers like their own employees. Labor brokers aren’t staffing companies; they are individuals who can muster a handful to hundreds of construction workers. They may have a business office, but much of the time they operate out of a residence. They can either be incorporated or be dba’s.
Labor brokers will misclassify employees as 1099 subcontractors, but most pay employees under the table in cash or with a check. Some labor brokers are uninsured and use fake certificates of insurance, but many have policies. The problem is they pay premiums on a fraction of their true payrolls. There is a case in Florida where an insurance broker issued 450 insurance certificates to a labor broker, claiming $43,000 in payroll for four workers. Sophisticated schemes like those in Florida involve insurance brokers, accountants, upper-tier contractors, shell companies and check-cashing stores.
These schemes work well for specialty subcontractors. They use the lower labor costs from the brokers to underbid law-abiding competitors, while brandishing the subcontract relationship with brokers and insurance certificate to shield against liability. That is how they drive full-premium-paying contractors out of business and take control of markets.
I am not as familiar with other industries as I am with construction. I do know that the labor-broker system grew from the agricultural industry. In general, the practice of subcontracting labor has been growing. Still, the various studies of fraudulent employment practices universally list construction as a leading abuser.
We know it’s hard to measure workers compensation fraud nationally. Still, do you have any sense of how big premium scheming is (including lost revenues), and how it compares to bogus work injury claims in overall size?
I haven’t found a national study on the degree of workers-compensation premium fraud in the construction industry, but there are state studies. In Tennessee, carriers lost $91.6 million in 2006 and in California they lost $264 million in 2011. We think those estimates are low. Consider the 2008 West Palm Beach, Florida Grand Jury report on illicit use of check-cashing stores. The report described how just 10 contractors moved $1 billion in cash pay through check cashers in less than three years. You can find these studies and reports on our informational website.
Claimant fraud is less costly than employer premium fraud. A California report, though, shows premium fraud losses to carriers are much greater than claimant fraud. Total fraud losses from cases with the Department of Insurance amounted to $8 million in the first six months of 2013. Of that, $6.7 million came from premium fraud and $1.3 million from false claims. Those numbers were not broken down by industry. It’s noteworthy that claimant fraudsters were more likely to get jailed than employers.
Carriers are losing a shocking amount of premiums. Still, despite the significant dollars lost, premium fraud doesn’t get the attention it should. If we could double the premium-fraud losses caught by California it would mean a yearly number of $13.4 million. That’s just 5 percent of the $264 million lost in the construction industry alone.
How are key states identifying premium schemes and strengthening laws or other enforcement tools to combat them?
A number of states are taking innovative actions against premium fraud. The California insurance department gives grants to county district attorneys to fund insurance fraud prosecutions.
Washington is a monopolistic state. It uses fraud-detection software that compares information in various databases to identify likely abusers for premium-fraud audits. Tennessee is a private-market state. It has just installed a similar system. The legislature funded the system and additional compliance investigators. They also added a law creating civil penalties for premium avoidance.
Florida has dedicated workers-compensation compliance prosecutors in select counties. They also have a new database that gets real-time information about checks cashed at check-cashing stores that they compare to proof-of-coverage information. Both Florida and Connecticut also have demonstrated that they aren’t afraid to use their stop-work-order authority.
States need robust tools for both civil and criminal enforcement. But they can’t just be used against labor brokers. Enforcement must reach all parties involved, including the specialty subcontractors and other upper-tier contractors involved in schemes. Labor brokers are abundant and easily replaced.
How can the anti-fraud community partner with your union to combat workers-comp premium scams?
Because we are a construction union, we know how the industry operates, and specific job-site conditions and cheating employers. We can share that information with carriers and enforcement agencies willing to act. We also welcome others to work with us to strengthen state and federal law- enforcement capabilities. They include union and non-union employers, carriers and community organizations.
But it can’t stop there. We each must examine our own practices that encourage, enable or fail to detect fraud. The construction industry must change course and stop awarding work to scofflaws. Insurance certificates need to be modified so insurers can track the number being issued, and insurance certificates should indicate the amount of payroll and work classifications. Also, insurers should re-evaluate their auditing procedures, and whether premiums truly capture the risk posed by contractors and subcontractors using the labor-broker system.
Also, educating stakeholders is a large part of what we do. For more information, follow us on Twitter @nixpayrollfraud and visit payrollfraud.net.
We are prepared to engage with fellow stakeholders. Action is needed. Contractors who pay their full premiums are being marginalized in significant markets. They face increasing pressure to join in illegal schemes or go out of business. Moreover, insurance carriers are losing millions in premiums daily.
https://www.cmwcarpenters.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/large_Matthew_Capece.png180180IKORCC/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/CMWCarpenterslogoFIN.pngIKORCC2016-05-02 00:00:002019-06-24 04:34:49Four Questions Interview with Matthew Capece
Workers-comp premium scams by employers may steal more money than bogus work injury claims. At least that’s what many experts say. And the problem could be growing. This is especially true in urban centers with deep underground economies.
Firms in the dangerous construction trades are among the largest offenders. The Coalition met recently with a new and unexpected anti-fraud ally: the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. It’s the voice of organized labor in the building trades. Premium-avoidance schemes leave workers exposed without state-required benefits. Federal, state and local governments also lose untold millions in unpaid taxes.
Shady businesses lowball their workforce and payroll size — two important factors in setting comp premiums. The firms misclassify workers as subcontractors, then pay them in cash under the table. A dishonest employer illegally can duck hundreds of thousands of dollars in workers-comp premiums and taxes in a year.
Workers also are cheated out of workers-comp benefits, wages, overtime, unemployment benefits and Social Security. Honest employers lose business because cheaters use the illicit savings to underbid them for contracts. And, workers comp insurers lose premiums.
The Coalition’s recent meeting with the carpenters union revealed disturbing examples of premium-avoidance schemes: A building at the University of Connecticut … Florida hospital … construction at the Atlanta airport … and a building at the Walter Reed military hospital complex in suburban Washington, D.C.
The carpenters’ proposals for comp insurers show how partnerships can help move anti-fraud efforts forward more decisively:
Work together on best practices for conducting audits and investigations into premium-avoidance schemes;
Adopt procedures to red-flag suspected premium fraud; and
Cooperate with stakeholders on investigations.
Workers-comp insurers already do much of this, yet premium cons remain virulent. What’s needed is stepped-up alertness and action by all parties. This becomes a force-multiplier that identifies more schemes, and boosts the entire anti-fraud effort.
Fraud fighters and their allies must team up to educate state policymakers about stopping costly comp scams — premium avoidance and false injury claims. Fraud fighters can speed up progress by enlisting non-traditional allies such as the carpenters union. The more influential allies that join anti-fraud efforts, the stronger our efforts against comp scams will become.
Source: Fraud Wire
Graphic: Fraud Wire
Image: Bernard Pollack
https://www.cmwcarpenters.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Union_quote.png344180IKORCC/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/CMWCarpenterslogoFIN.pngIKORCC2016-05-02 00:00:002019-06-24 04:39:17Allying with carpenters against workers-comp premium cheaters
ICRA program continues to make hospital construction safer
/0 Comments/in News /by IKORCCThe Infection Control Risk Assessment (ICRA) Program provides patient-focused training for Carpenters and other trades working in hospitals, medical facilities or other occupied spaces. Workers who attend the training learn about containing pathogens, controlling airflow and recognizing and properly disposing of hazardous materials. By learning how to keep hospital construction sites safe and infection-free, attendees gain skills that set them apart from the rest of the field.
We are proud to work with other trades to ensure safety across all spectrums of hospital construction and appreciate their ongoing commitment to patient and staff safety. The dedication of other crafts to excellence in healthcare construction is demonstrated by sending 3,467 of their members through the ICRA 8-Hour Awareness Training.
Do you want to ensure infection control best practices are used by construction workers in upcoming renovation or construction projects at your healthcare facility? Contact Brad Murphy at 317-605-1386 or bmurphy@ikorcc.com for a list of contractors in your area that use ICRA-trained staff.
Construction ICRA Best Practices is an innovative program that provides patient-focused training for Carpenters and other trades working in hospitals, medical facilities or other occupied spaces. This set of best practices helps prevent the spread of disease and infection during construction at healthcare facilities. ICRA instructors also offer training opportunities to healthcare facility staff.
Agreement between U.S. Department of Labor, Oregon Bureau of Labor provides education, enforcement to protect workers from missclassification
/0 Comments/in News /by IKORCCParticipants: U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division
Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries
Partnership description: The division and bureau signed a three-year Memorandum of Understanding intended to protect employees’ rights by preventing their misclassification as independent contractors or other non-employee statuses. The two agencies will provide clear, accurate and easy-to-access outreach to employers, employees, and other stakeholders; share resources and enhance enforcement by conducting coordinated investigations and sharing information consistent with applicable law.
Background: The division is working with the IRS and 28 other states to combat employee misclassification and to ensure that workers get the wages, benefits, and protections to which they are entitled. Mislabeling employees as independent contractors can deny them of basic rights such as minimum wage, overtime and a host of other benefits. Misclassification also reduces federal and state tax revenues, and prevents contributions to state unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation funds.
More information on misclassification and the effort are available at http://www.dol.gov/misclassification/.
Quotes: “The Wage and Hour Division continues to attack this problem head on with a combination of a robust education and outreach campaign and a nationwide, data-driven, strategic enforcement across industries. Our goal is always to strive toward workplaces with decreased misclassification, increased compliance, and more workers receiving a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.”
David Weil, U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division Administrator
Quote: “When corporations misclassify their workforce, they make it much more difficult for workers facing wage theft, civil rights abuse or other unfair treatment on the job. This agreement will create a new tool to help protect the rights of Oregon workers cheated on the job.”
Brad Avakian, Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries Commissioner
Source: WHD News Brief, 04/04/2016
Photo: Matt Brown
2016 IKORCC Scholarship Winners
/0 Comments/in News /by IKORCCCongratulations to our 40 2016 scholarship recipients! Each student received a $1,000 scholarship toward tuition, room and board, or books.
Twenty of the scholarships were awarded on high school grade point average (60%) and SAT or ACT scores (40%). The other twenty were selected by random in a drawing. This year’s applicants were evaluated by a team of college administrates at the Owens Community College in Perrysburg, Ohio.
Recipients are sons, daughters, and dependent children of members of the Indiana/Kentucky/Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights. The parent or guardian must be a member in good standing of IKORCC for at least one year. The son, daughter, or dependent child must be a high school graduating senior or be attending a college, university or trade school as a full-time student.
To apply for a 2017 scholarship, click here.
Four Questions Interview with Matthew Capece
/0 Comments/in News /by IKORCCWorkers compensation insurers have long dealt with premium-avoidance schemes. Among the ploys are lowballing workforce size and payroll, and misclassifying employees as independent contractors. How prevalent are premium scams in construction trades, and are any variations unique to construction?
Workers-compensation premium scams involving construction projects are alarmingly commonplace. They regularly occur on residential projects. We even find them on large commercial sites, schools, hospitals, high-rise condos and government jobs like military bases. Fraud has become standard operating procedure in a number of states, including Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. But it is happening all across the country.
The schemes vary in sophistication, but the growing practice is using subcontract labor brokers. For instance, interior-systems specialty subcontractors install metal studs, sheetrock and ceilings. They also provide supervision and, maybe, some hands-on labor.
The bulk of their labor comes from brokers. Yet the specialty subcontractor supervises and treats the labor brokers’ workers like their own employees. Labor brokers aren’t staffing companies; they are individuals who can muster a handful to hundreds of construction workers. They may have a business office, but much of the time they operate out of a residence. They can either be incorporated or be dba’s.
Labor brokers will misclassify employees as 1099 subcontractors, but most pay employees under the table in cash or with a check. Some labor brokers are uninsured and use fake certificates of insurance, but many have policies. The problem is they pay premiums on a fraction of their true payrolls. There is a case in Florida where an insurance broker issued 450 insurance certificates to a labor broker, claiming $43,000 in payroll for four workers. Sophisticated schemes like those in Florida involve insurance brokers, accountants, upper-tier contractors, shell companies and check-cashing stores.
These schemes work well for specialty subcontractors. They use the lower labor costs from the brokers to underbid law-abiding competitors, while brandishing the subcontract relationship with brokers and insurance certificate to shield against liability. That is how they drive full-premium-paying contractors out of business and take control of markets.
I am not as familiar with other industries as I am with construction. I do know that the labor-broker system grew from the agricultural industry. In general, the practice of subcontracting labor has been growing. Still, the various studies of fraudulent employment practices universally list construction as a leading abuser.
We know it’s hard to measure workers compensation fraud nationally. Still, do you have any sense of how big premium scheming is (including lost revenues), and how it compares to bogus work injury claims in overall size?
I haven’t found a national study on the degree of workers-compensation premium fraud in the construction industry, but there are state studies. In Tennessee, carriers lost $91.6 million in 2006 and in California they lost $264 million in 2011. We think those estimates are low. Consider the 2008 West Palm Beach, Florida Grand Jury report on illicit use of check-cashing stores. The report described how just 10 contractors moved $1 billion in cash pay through check cashers in less than three years. You can find these studies and reports on our informational website.
Claimant fraud is less costly than employer premium fraud. A California report, though, shows premium fraud losses to carriers are much greater than claimant fraud. Total fraud losses from cases with the Department of Insurance amounted to $8 million in the first six months of 2013. Of that, $6.7 million came from premium fraud and $1.3 million from false claims. Those numbers were not broken down by industry. It’s noteworthy that claimant fraudsters were more likely to get jailed than employers.
Carriers are losing a shocking amount of premiums. Still, despite the significant dollars lost, premium fraud doesn’t get the attention it should. If we could double the premium-fraud losses caught by California it would mean a yearly number of $13.4 million. That’s just 5 percent of the $264 million lost in the construction industry alone.
How are key states identifying premium schemes and strengthening laws or other enforcement tools to combat them?
A number of states are taking innovative actions against premium fraud. The California insurance department gives grants to county district attorneys to fund insurance fraud prosecutions.
Washington is a monopolistic state. It uses fraud-detection software that compares information in various databases to identify likely abusers for premium-fraud audits. Tennessee is a private-market state. It has just installed a similar system. The legislature funded the system and additional compliance investigators. They also added a law creating civil penalties for premium avoidance.
Florida has dedicated workers-compensation compliance prosecutors in select counties. They also have a new database that gets real-time information about checks cashed at check-cashing stores that they compare to proof-of-coverage information. Both Florida and Connecticut also have demonstrated that they aren’t afraid to use their stop-work-order authority.
States need robust tools for both civil and criminal enforcement. But they can’t just be used against labor brokers. Enforcement must reach all parties involved, including the specialty subcontractors and other upper-tier contractors involved in schemes. Labor brokers are abundant and easily replaced.
How can the anti-fraud community partner with your union to combat workers-comp premium scams?
Because we are a construction union, we know how the industry operates, and specific job-site conditions and cheating employers. We can share that information with carriers and enforcement agencies willing to act. We also welcome others to work with us to strengthen state and federal law- enforcement capabilities. They include union and non-union employers, carriers and community organizations.
But it can’t stop there. We each must examine our own practices that encourage, enable or fail to detect fraud. The construction industry must change course and stop awarding work to scofflaws. Insurance certificates need to be modified so insurers can track the number being issued, and insurance certificates should indicate the amount of payroll and work classifications. Also, insurers should re-evaluate their auditing procedures, and whether premiums truly capture the risk posed by contractors and subcontractors using the labor-broker system.
Also, educating stakeholders is a large part of what we do. For more information, follow us on Twitter @nixpayrollfraud and visit payrollfraud.net.
We are prepared to engage with fellow stakeholders. Action is needed. Contractors who pay their full premiums are being marginalized in significant markets. They face increasing pressure to join in illegal schemes or go out of business. Moreover, insurance carriers are losing millions in premiums daily.
Source: Fraud Wire
Photo: Fraud Wire
Allying with carpenters against workers-comp premium cheaters
/0 Comments/in News /by IKORCCWorkers-comp premium scams by employers may steal more money than bogus work injury claims. At least that’s what many experts say. And the problem could be growing. This is especially true in urban centers with deep underground economies.
Firms in the dangerous construction trades are among the largest offenders. The Coalition met recently with a new and unexpected anti-fraud ally: the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. It’s the voice of organized labor in the building trades. Premium-avoidance schemes leave workers exposed without state-required benefits. Federal, state and local governments also lose untold millions in unpaid taxes.
Shady businesses lowball their workforce and payroll size — two important factors in setting comp premiums. The firms misclassify workers as subcontractors, then pay them in cash under the table. A dishonest employer illegally can duck hundreds of thousands of dollars in workers-comp premiums and taxes in a year.
Workers also are cheated out of workers-comp benefits, wages, overtime, unemployment benefits and Social Security. Honest employers lose business because cheaters use the illicit savings to underbid them for contracts. And, workers comp insurers lose premiums.
The Coalition’s recent meeting with the carpenters union revealed disturbing examples of premium-avoidance schemes: A building at the University of Connecticut … Florida hospital … construction at the Atlanta airport … and a building at the Walter Reed military hospital complex in suburban Washington, D.C.
The carpenters’ proposals for comp insurers show how partnerships can help move anti-fraud efforts forward more decisively:
Workers-comp insurers already do much of this, yet premium cons remain virulent. What’s needed is stepped-up alertness and action by all parties. This becomes a force-multiplier that identifies more schemes, and boosts the entire anti-fraud effort.
Fraud fighters and their allies must team up to educate state policymakers about stopping costly comp scams — premium avoidance and false injury claims. Fraud fighters can speed up progress by enlisting non-traditional allies such as the carpenters union. The more influential allies that join anti-fraud efforts, the stronger our efforts against comp scams will become.
Source: Fraud Wire
Graphic: Fraud Wire
Image: Bernard Pollack