Report: Contractor took workers to cleaners

Yawu Miller

State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson walked out of a legislative briefing on UNICCO Services Company — the janitorial firm hired to clean the State House and other state office buildings — clutching a stack of papers.

Among them was a weekly payroll report form the firm filed with the state listing its workers, their hours worked, their rate of pay and payments into their pension fund and health care benefits.

“This is not what they were paying people,” she said, holding up the report. “I’ve seen the pay stubs.”

In all, UNICCO and the firms it subcontracted with are alleged to have underpaid their employees a total of at least $80,000 a year for the past five years.

UNICCO did not return phone calls for comment by the Banner’s press deadline.

Wilkerson said the revelations that UNICCO was not paying a prevailing wage sparked outrage in the State House.

“The Legislature found out that right under our noses we had a contractor who was abusing the employees and stealing their money,” she said.

UNICCO won a competitive bid for the contract to clean the State House and other state buildings. Under state law, contractors with the state are required to pay the prevailing wage — the hourly wage, benefits and overtime paid to a majority of workers in the state as determined by the Department of Labor.

The funds allocated in the budget for the cleaning contracts at state office buildings are allocated based on lawmakers’ faith that the workers are being paid the prevailing wage. The falsified payroll report forms apparently helped reinforce that belief.

“It seems to me that in the future we can’t trust what contractors are telling us, which is a terrible thing,” said state Rep. Byron Rushing. “We really have to listen to the workers.”

Union officials at SEIU Local 615 were alerted to the problem by workers at the Boston Convention Center and began investigating UNICCO’s compensation to workers there and at other state-owned buildings. Their findings, contained in a report forwarded to state legislators, were that the firm has engaged in a pattern of abusive treatment of its workers.

In 2002, UNICCO paid out $1 million to settle a sexual harassment suit against female employees of the firm. According to a complaint filed against UNICCO, the company failed to act on women’s claims that they were being harassed and retaliated against the women and forced them to quit.

The firm was also fined $152,500 in December last year after two UNICCO window washers plunged from a building in an accident the U.S. Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration found was the result of a pattern of willful repeat violations of safety standards.

In the current wage case, UNICCO has agreed to pay the workers the wages they are owed, but Wilkerson warns that the firm has violated the state’s Prevailing Wage Law, which may mean employees are entitled to triple damages.

While lawmakers met in a Senate conference room, SEIU Local 615 President Rocio Saenz led union activists in a protest against UNICCO at Post Office Square. UNICCO’s labor practices stem in part from the country’s refusal to grant rights to undocumented immigrants, according to Saenz.

“As long as we have an immigration system that denies 11 million people the path to citizenship, everybody suffers,” she said. “It’s easier to exploit immigrant workers who have no legal status.”