By: Brendan Spiegel

New York City's best construction sites operate with rigorous safety standards, extensive training and clear rules about everything from wages to workers' compensation.

But on too many non-union sites, those standards aren’t present at all.

Over the past year, Under Construction News has documented recurring practices that leave workers underpaid, improperly classified, inadequately protected and afraid to speak up. Not every non-union contractor operates this way. But these abuses are widespread enough to form a familiar pattern across New York City's construction industry.

Here are seven of the worst.

Wage theft can take many forms. The most direct is also the simplest: workers don't receive all the money they've earned.

A worker might agree to one hourly wage when they're hired, only to receive less when the paycheck arrives. They might work a full week but discover that some of their hours are missing. Their paycheck might arrive weeks late—or bounce when they try to cash it.

Cristian Batres, a council representative with the New York City District Council of Carpenters who regularly speaks with non-union workers, described encountering workers who were promised $30 an hour and then told after they started working that they would receive only $20. He has also encountered workers who weren’t paid on time or didn’t receive checks for some work at all.

For workers living paycheck to paycheck, missing wages aren't a minor payroll dispute. They can mean not having enough money for rent, groceries or bills.

Read more: ["I Worked Hard. I Just Wanted to Be Paid Fairly."]

Getting an hourly wage doesn't necessarily mean getting paid for every hour worked.

Workers have described arriving early and being told to start working before their paid shift begins. Others work late, six days a week or even seven—and still receive their regular hourly rate instead of overtime.

Batres says unpaid overtime is one of the recurring problems he encounters on non-union jobsites. Workers may put in more than 40 hours in a week without receiving time-and-a-half as required by law.

These practices can be especially difficult to track when employers don't maintain accurate time records or when part of a worker's wages are paid in cash.

A half hour of unpaid work might not seem dramatic. Add up unpaid time and overtime premiums across weeks, months and an entire crew, and it can become a significant source of savings for an employer—taken directly out of workers' paychecks.

Read more: ["Under Pressure: Life on New York City's Non-Union Construction Sites"]

Some workers receive a normal paycheck. Others are paid in cash. And some receive a combination of the two.

UCN has interviewed workers whose official paycheck represented only part of what they actually earned, with the remainder handed over in cash. Other workers have received an official check alongside additional cash in the same pay envelope.

Why does this happen?

Because the wages reported on the books determine much more than the size of a paycheck. Payroll records are tied to payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, workers' compensation and other employer obligations. By reporting only part of what workers actually earn—or keeping workers off payroll entirely—an employer can substantially reduce those costs.

The employer saves money. The worker can be left with an incomplete record of their earnings and fewer protections when they lose a job, get hurt or need to establish what they actually earned.

And contractors that properly report every dollar of payroll are forced to compete against businesses whose bids are lower in part because some of their true labor costs have disappeared from the books.

On some non-union projects, figuring out who actually employs a worker can be surprisingly difficult.

A  general contractor is hired. The general contractor hires a subcontractor. That company turns to another company—or an individual—to assemble a crew. That intermediary—often referred to in the industry as a “labor broker”—may then use one or more LLCs to pay the workers.

In some cases, companies officially report only a handful of employees while supplying much larger crews. Workers who function as employees can instead be paid through separate LLCs, allowing what is effectively payroll to appear on paper as payments to outside vendors.

The worker at the bottom of that chain may know little more than the first name of the person who recruited them. Batres has encountered workers who don't even know which company technically employs them.

That isn't merely confusing paperwork. It can obscure responsibility.

When a paycheck doesn't arrive, who owes the money? When someone is injured, whose workers' compensation policy covers them? When employment laws are violated, which company is responsible?

The more layers separating a worker from the companies running the project, the easier it becomes for responsibility to move somewhere else.

Another way of lowering labor costs is to call someone an independent contractor when they're actually functioning as an employee.

A worker may report to the same job every morning, take instructions from a supervisor and perform the same work as everyone else on the crew—yet receive a 1099 identifying them as an independent contractor.

For an employer, that distinction can mean avoiding payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, workers' compensation premiums and overtime obligations. Misclassification is one of the recurring payroll schemes found on non-union projects.

For workers, the consequences can be much more serious than a different tax form.

They may be responsible for taxes an employer would otherwise have paid. They may discover after losing a job that they aren't eligible for benefits they expected. And if they're injured, questions about who employed them and what coverage applies can become significantly more complicated.

The worker does the job of an employee while absorbing costs and risks that legally belong to the employer.

Safe construction depends on training, proper equipment, competent supervision and a culture in which workers are expected to stop when something isn't safe.

On poorly run non-union sites, the horror stories pile up: workers sent onto jobs without adequate training or protective equipment; dangerous tools and conditions left unaddressed; injuries mishandled or minimized; and workers pressured to keep going when they should be receiving medical care.

One worker interviewed by UCN recalled installing fiberglass insulation without being given even a basic mask. Another construction worker who spent years working non-union remembered receiving little formal safety training at all.

And then there are the injuries themselves.

UCN reported on a carpenter whose hand was trapped beneath falling sheets of drywall. No ambulance was called. They took the subway to a clinic on their own. After doctors told them to rest, they said they were soon pressured to return to work—and found themselves lifting sheetrock again.

Their experience is just one example of what can happen when a jobsite lacks a strong system for preventing injuries, responding to them and protecting workers afterward. In UCN's interviews with workers and industry leaders, stories of inadequate safety precautions and workers left vulnerable after injuries have surfaced again and again on non-union jobsites.

Union construction takes a fundamentally different approach: extensive training before workers enter the field, enforceable safety standards on the job and established systems for responding when injuries occur.

Related: ["A New Approach to Workers' Compensation Is Saving Time and Money—and Helping Workers Recover Faster"]

Every other practice on this list becomes easier when workers believe complaining could cost them their livelihood.

On the most exploitative jobsites, workers can be treated as disposable: question a short paycheck, refuse an unsafe assignment or complain about working conditions, and someone else can take your place tomorrow.

That threat doesn't always have to be spoken aloud. Workers who depend on the next day's shift—and who may have little savings or few other employment options—understand the risk of challenging the person who decides whether they'll be called back to work.

That power imbalance can be particularly severe for immigrant workers and others with limited employment options. The people most vulnerable to wage theft and unsafe conditions can also be the people least able to risk losing a paycheck.

And that fear protects the entire system. Wage theft, safety violations and payroll schemes are all harder to uncover when workers believe the safest option is to keep their heads down and say nothing.

Read more: ["From the Margins to the Middle Class: David Caraballoso"]

The attraction of non-union construction is often presented simply: lower labor costs.

But it's worth asking where those savings come from.

When the worst practices take hold, they can come from wages that aren't paid. Overtime that's ignored. Payroll that's hidden. Insurance premiums that are avoided. Training that isn't provided. Safety standards that aren't enforced.

And the impact extends beyond individual workers.

Responsible contractors have to compete against companies with artificially low costs. Governments lose revenue when wages aren't properly reported. And when workers aren't properly insured or protected, the costs of injuries and unemployment can ultimately be shifted onto workers, their families and the public.

That's why the difference between a responsible construction job and an exploitative one can't be measured only by the price of the bid.

It's also measured by what happens to the people doing the building: whether they're properly trained, whether they're safe, whether they're paid every dollar they've earned—and whether a construction job gives them a way to build a career rather than simply get through another day.