Super-Rich Oil and Gas Companies Routinely Underpay own Workers

http://www.juancole.com/2014/09/companies-routinely-underpay.html

Super-Rich Oil and Gas Companies Routinely Underpay own Workers
By contributors | Sep. 28, 2014
By Naveena Sadasivam via ProPublica

A ProPublica review of U.S. Department of Labor investigations shows that oil and gas workers 2013 men and women often performing high-risk jobs 2013 are routinely being underpaid, and the companies hiring them often are using accounting techniques to deny workers benefits such as medical leave or unemployment insurance.

The DOL investigations have centered on what is known as worker “misclassification,” an accounting gambit whereby companies treat full time employees as independent contractors paid hourly wages, and then fail to make good on their obligations. The technique, investigators and experts say, has become ever more common as small companies seek to gain contracts in an intensely competitive market by holding labor costs down.

In the complex, rapidly expanding oil and gas industry, much of the day to day work done on oil rigs and gas wells is sub-contracted out to smaller companies. For instance, on one gas rig alone, the operator might hire one company to construct the well pad, another to drill the well, a third company to provide hydraulic fracking services and yet another to truck water and chemicals for disposal.

But for the thousands of workers in the hundreds of different companies, a single standard is supposed to apply: by law, they must be paid more than minimum wage and they must be fairly compensated for any overtime accrued.