PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The governors of Pennsylvania and New Jersey on Thursday announced a joint effort to go after employers who commit wage theft and worker misclassification.
The two met at the Finishing Trades Institute in Philadelphia to unveil a new interstate task force to collaborate on labor law enforcement worker protections, while enabling healthy business competition.
Gov. Josh Shapiro has tasked the secretary of the Department of Labor & Industry, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has tasked the commissioner of the Department of Labor & Workforce Development, with sharing information on contractors working in both states.
“We think the two of us together is a lot more powerful than one of us on our own,” Murphy said.
“If we learned something about a contractor in Pennsylvania, we share it with New Jersey. If there's going to be an enforcement action we can do together, we will,” Shapiro said.
“This is a one-plus-one-equals-three moment,” said Murphy. “Share information, share best practices, share where we think the future is going, share enforcement techniques.”
There are 259,000 workers in the commonwealth who get ripped off in one form or another every year, Shapiro said. And when companies do that, taxpayers are left to make up the difference.
“Because when a worker gets misclassified and the proper taxes don't get collected, the proper wages don't get paid. You know who gets short changed? Our local police, our local parks, they don't get the revenues that they deserve. And then the Commonwealth has to come up with the difference.”
Murphy put it in very plain terms: “If you're a bad-apple contractor, we're either going to bring you into compliance or we're going to put you out of business.”
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