I saw at a construction site “Wood Frame = Wage Theft”. What does this mean and why?
In: 42
In America, lumber/timber is relatively cheap, so most single-family residential homes have historically been made using simple wood framing techniques. This form of construction is relatively simple, and so it is/was very common for many small family-business sized contractors to offer this kind of work rather than a few massive construction companies. (Which meant this work has historically been largely non-Union.)
As is always the case, customers wanting the job done cheaper and employers wanting to pay less for the same output lead to some “innovations” over the years. One of these was the use of illegal immigrants to supplement/replace their workforce; this “innovation” meant that contractors would be paying their workers “under the table” which made ideas like “not paying for taxes/benefits/insurance/work-comp/etc.” and “paying less than minimum wage” follow soon thereafter. Another “innovation” was the switch to using “subcontractors” rather than “employees”; in practice the workers were still treated as employees but now without a number of legal protections that would apply to them. The combination of these shady practices made things ripe for abuse like “wage theft”, especially because it meant employers didn’t have to worry about their shady behaviors being reported to government authorities or small-claims court (because few if any of these illegal immigrants would risk deportation by making the report/claim).
Meanwhile, large apartment complexes and high-rise buildings were historically not allowed to be made with basic wood frame techniques on account of the fire hazard, which meant that less simple construction methods (like steel framing and concrete/masonry work) were needed. The scale of these projects also meant that they were largely the purview of medium-to-large construction companies which meant that Union membership was much more prevalent than in the kind of mom-and-pop wood frame construction firms. This all didn’t entirely negate the “innovations” of illegal immigrant workers and subcontractor status abuses, but things were relatively less rampant than in the worst small-business cases.
More recently, some architecture firms discovered a bit of a legal “loophole” with regards to wood framing; if they use wood materials of a certain fire-retardant specification in conjunction with adding fire sprinkler systems, then they are allowed to build buildings up to five wooden stories tall using wood framing techniques without breaking fire code. This has lead to the massive boom of “five-on-one” style apartment buildings as developers can now get higher multi-story densities at the lower wood-frame construction costs. However, it also means that more large-scale work is being done using a historically non-Union wood-framing workforce, and that has allowed ever more of those shady practices to creep onto these larger construction sites. (Either by large companies subcontracting to shady subcontractors, or shady small-companies growing to take on medium-sized jobs, or by large companies simply adopting the shady practices themselves for their wood-frame workforce.)
The sign you see is probably put up in reference to something of that effect.
Latest Answers