COLORADO POLITICS — Colorado added almost 10,000 jobs in the construction industry between April 2017 and April of this year, but that growth is accompanied by complaints about payroll and employee “misclassification” that Gov. John Hickenlooper says can lead to labor-law violations.
This week, he signed an executive order setting up an enforcement task force that will coordinate with several state agencies to share information and improve investigation processes around alleged misclassification and tax fraud.
The problem shows up in how some construction companies classify employees and independent contractors. The latter, according to Randy Thornhill of the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters, allows unscrupulous construction companies to avoid paying fair wages and payroll taxes.
“They use labor brokers to hire inexperienced workers onto dangerous job sites as ‘independent contractors,’ Thornhill said in a statement.
Read more at Colorado Politics: https://bit.ly/2Mbl8AI
