Edwin Mayorga helped build one of the highest-profile developments in D.C. in recent years — a sprawling, mixed-use complex in Northwest that brought the District its first Wegmans grocery store, a 690-unit residential building and hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail.
But, Mayorga says, he still has not been fully paid for his work on the project, known as City Ridge. Despite working punishing hours for months, Mayorga says, he never got paid overtime. The sheet metal worker estimates the company that employed him owes him thousands of dollars in unpaid wages for this and other practices.
“We worked 12 hours a day from Monday to Friday, and on Saturday we worked 10 hours, Sunday, 10 hours, practically,” he said in Spanish, through an interpreter. “We weren’t resting.”
Mayorga, 35, is one of an estimated 370 workers denied the proper minimum wage, overtime and paid sick leave under the contractor that built City Ridge and its various subcontractors, a new lawsuit against the companies from the D.C. Office of the Attorney General alleges. The suit alleges that the companies systematically misclassified workers as independent contractors instead of employees, violating D.C.’s labor laws in pursuit of cost savings. The attorney general’s office and local construction-worker union officials said contractors in D.C.’s construction industry routinely use “labor brokers” -- smaller companies that find workers and typically have no broader say in the project — to hire independent contractors so they can cut costs. The lawsuit filed Tuesday in D.C. Superior Court seeks penalties against the five companies, as well as restitution and back pay for the affected workers.
The suit names the Whiting-Turner Contracting Company as the general contractor and alleges that Whiting-Turner relied on a subcontractor called Welch Mechanical Contractors to install major building systems like mechanical, electrical, drywall and plumbing at City Ridge and other construction project sites. Welch used a group of three smaller companies to find workers to staff its projects, the complaint states.
Between November 2021 and March 2022, the suit alleges, these companies paid at least 27 workers less than the District’s minimum wage, which was then $15.20 — at times paying workers as little as $13 or $14 an hour, according to the suit. The suit also alleges that during the same time period, the companies failed to pay overtime on more than 240 occasions in which workers were in excess of 40 hours per week. Further, the lawsuit alleges that because Welch and its subcontractors were improperly classifying employees as independent contractors, they were also illegally denied paid sick leave.
A group of workers also sued Welch separately in 2022, alleging the company owed them back wages for their work on the City Ridge project; court documents show most of the plaintiffs reached a settlement agreement with the company last year.
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Whiting-Turner and Welch did not immediately return calls for comment.
These problems are not isolated to the City Ridge project, the suit states. The attorney general’s office alleges Welch’s labor subcontractors violate these laws on projects throughout the city.
The lawsuit is one in a series of wage-theft suits brought by the District attorney general’s office, which says its workers’ protection section has secured more than $10 million in penalties and restitution since January 2023.
“It is unacceptable for businesses operating in the District of Columbia to boost their profits by stealing from workers,” D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a statement. “Labor brokers and the contractors that employ them not only steal from workers responsible for building our city but exact an unfair competitive advantage over businesses that play by the rules.”
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Rolando Montoya, an organizer with the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation (SMART) Workers Local 100, says he heard complaints from workers at the City Ridge site about not getting paid, and then worked to connect them with resources to fight for proper compensation.
Montoya cited a “widespread” pattern among contractors in the District of misclassifying workers to deny them benefits. Initially, Montoya said, he thought companies were using the practice as a workaround that allowed them to hire undocumented workers. But, he added, “what I have encountered now is that a lot of these [workers] have good documentation, but the companies are [still] using this dishonest way to work.”
The effects of the practice, Montoya argues, ripple across D.C.’s construction industry and leave contractors that employ unionized workers at a competitive disadvantage.
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“Our contractors that are being responsible, paying for training, paying good wages, benefits — when they bid on these projects, they can’t compete,” says Montoya. “It’s affecting union workers, because it’s less work.”
After his experience working at City Ridge, Mayorga, for his part, has moved away from nonunion work and joined SMART Local 100.
“It’s a huge difference,” he said, “mainly because one is not fighting to get paid.”
A 2019 industry analysis by the attorney general’s office found that construction companies can save between 16 and 40 percent in labor costs when they misclassify workers. The analysis pointed out that the dynamics of the construction industry, in particular, incentivize this behavior. Work is awarded by competitive bid, and companies strive to keep labor costs low. Industries with high injury rates also drive up workers’ compensation insurance premiums, which can incentivize companies to misclassify workers as independent contractors and deny them workers’ compensation if they get injured on the job, the analysis said.
