News & Resources Category: Resources

While contractors move quickly to sanitize their workplaces, seeking to protect their employees, customers, and guests from the Coronavirus, diligently following directives from the CDC, no amount of sanitizing can insulate contracting businesses from potential negative outcomes and costly unprecedented and unpredictable impacts caused by the virus.

Most everyone has seen the classic 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz.  In one scene along the yellow brick road in the dark forest, Dorothy, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow talk of the scariest things they might encounter, repeating their greatest fears with the line “Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!” as they scurry through the forest.  If Dorothy and her sidekicks were here today, they might be heard to say Lions and Tigers and Bears, and COVID-19, Oh My!

In October of 2010, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed the Construction Workplace Misclassification Act.  The purpose of the Act was to prohibit construction industry employers from classifying people who worked for them as independent contractors, as opposed to employees, and to prosecute those employers who misclassified such people.  Though the law has been in effect now for nearly 10 years, it has not spurred many prosecutions. However, recently, the Pennsylvania Attorney General, along with the District Attorney for Delaware County, announced a joint pilot program aimed at combating the misclassification of construction workers, putting Pennsylvania contractors on notice that they intend to prosecute contractor violators.  

Contractors working on prevailing wage projects know that the law requires them to complete and submit certified payroll forms indicating the hours each workman worked within each trade classification.  However, some contractors are of the mistaken belief that the Department of Labor and Industry will condone a practice sometimes utilized by contractors of simply using a ratio of hours per day per workman for trade hours versus laborer hours worked. 

When an object or a person is at rest or in a state of stillness it or he/she is said to be in repose. If one were to take a drive down Cameron Street in Harrisburg, by what was once the thriving business known as Henry’s Tire Shop, what you would see is much of what used to be part of the McFarland Apartments parking lot, complete with a formerly parked car, piled up and lying in repose in the tire shop.

When in 1994, the Pennsylvania legislature initially passed prompt payment protection for contractors and subcontractors by enacting the Contractor and Subcontractor Payment Act, commonly referred to as CASPA, construction contractors, particularly those acting in subcontractor roles, presumed that this legislative pronouncement preserved forever their rights to receive prompt payment for their work.