MONTANA DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND INDUSTRY
HELENA – The Task Force on Integrity in Wage Reporting and Employee Classification recently announced recommendations on how to help reduce and eliminate unlawful misclassification and payroll fraud in the construction industry.
The task force recommended additional educational and outreach initiatives, as well as changes to current rules and laws.
Among the recommendations are focusing on education for construction hiring agents, establishing a web-based dashboard that allows for quick compliance verification searches, creating a tip line where workers of employers can report suspected abuse of Independent Contractor Exemption Certificates, rule changes that allow inspectors to quickly determine compliance, changes to the ICEC renewal process that ensure the certificate holder provides additional documentation of their ongoing eligibility to hold a certificate, and increasing the penalties imposed for knowingly hiring an unregistered independent contractor.