Minnesota just scored its first conviction of a painter under a little-used law that makes wage theft a felony.
The contractor was accused of stealing more than $35,000 in wages from five workers for work at an affordable housing complex. The company was hired to do the work in 2020.
The contract to clean and paint the complex totaled more than $320,000. But the contract required the contractor to pay the prevailing minimum wage for painters of $36, which he did not.
One of the workers talked to the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades union, which helped file a complaint with the Minneapolis Civil Rights Division.
After an investigation, the city issued a letter in June 2021 demanding that the contractor pay restitution for shortchanging the wages. The contractor agreed to pay $43,166, but he never ponied up.
So the county attorney filed charges against the contractor under a 2019 ordinance that made it a felony to steal more than $1,000 in wages.
Although the law was on the books for years, it wasn’t actually used much in the courtroom. Local authorities were ill-equipped to investigate white collar crimes and didn’t have much to go on with the first-of-its-kind law.
This first major conviction will likely send a message, however. It’s clear that making wage theft a felony isn’t for show, and it can have dire consequences for crooked contractors.
In this case, the painting company owner will face sentencing in June. He could face up to a year in jail for the felony convictions of wage theft and theft by swindle, but is more likely to get probation for three to five years, according to local observers.
The convicted contractor is still allowed to operate his business, but will likely be shunned from any publicly-funded projects in the city and potentially the state.
Even if you don’t live in Minnesota, you should be wary of wage theft. As we previously reported, wage theft laws have been extended to general contractors working with subs in New York, California, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, Virginia, and Washington D.C.
