ROCKY HILL, Conn. — Serious labor violations have been committed at the site of a $60 million real estate development at 2418 Main St. in Rocky Hill, according to state Sen. Matt Lesser (D-Middletown) on Friday.
After the state’s Department of Labor and Department of Consumer Protection completed a joint investigation on Thursday, nine separate subcontractors were reportedly issued “stop-work” orders. Lesser says the orders resulted from serious labor violations such as worker misclassification and maintaining no or insufficient workers’ compensation coverage.
The project is occurring on the 12-acre property where the Ames department store headquarters once stood. It calls for knocking down the roughly 225,000-square-foot building, which is expected to be replaced with 11 buildings containing 213 apartment units, as well as 11,067 square feet of office space and 9,959 square feet of retail.
The project is partially funded by Connecticut taxpayers, as the developers received $999,000 in brownfield remediation funding from the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development, according to Lesser.
Therefore, Lesser believes that the contractors are not only stealing from their own workers but from the people of the state too. He said Connecticut is desperate for more housing, and cleaning up blighted properties is a priority, but emphasized that it must be done right.
“We need contractors to bid fairly, pay their taxes and follow the law. And how are these companies paying back the State of Connecticut? By cheating their own workers and short-changing state taxpayers. I want to thank the Departments of Labor and Consumer Protection for being on top of this,” Lesser said, noting that DOL is very understaffed. “It’s violations of the public trust like this by private, profit-making companies that should prompt the legislature to increase the size of the Wage and Workplace Standards Division in the state’s Department of Labor.”
Lesser encouraged the legislature to examine the prevailing wage threshold on DECD-funded or assisted projects like the one in Rocky Hill. He said the threshold is $1 million.
“This developer was able to skirt the prevailing wage requirement on this project after receiving a $999,000 brownfield remediation grant that’s just $1,000, or one-tenth of one percent, below the threshold,” Lesser said. “We must ensure that workers are getting paid correctly and that taxpayers aren’t left holding the bag for workplace injuries because some multi-millionaire isn’t paying for workers’ comp insurance.”
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