Members of the Bowdoin Labor Alliance (BLA) and the New England Regional Council of Carpenters (NERCC) gathered outside the construction site of new student dorms at Bowdoin College in Brunswick last Thursday to protest Timberland Drywall — a subcontractor for Wright-Ryan Construction working on the dorms — and its alleged misclassification of workers. 

The protest at Bowdoin was the first of what will be 30 days of protesting against the company by members of the alliance and NERCC. Two Maine carpenters, Dan Ayotte and Don Desjardins, will stand out in front of the construction site all 30 days to hand out fliers to students and neighbors about the issue. 

The NERCC, which is in contact with affected workers, filed a misclassification tip through the Maine Department of Labor website this May, according to a BLA press release. They say that Timberland Drywall has been misclassifying workers as independent contractors, a classification used by employers to avoid providing benefits, like health insurance, and paying for work-related expenses. The workers, often unaware of their situation, become their own independent companies, responsible for paying their own taxes, providing for their own sick days, and buying their own equipment. An investigation into the tip against Timberland is ongoing. 

John Leavitt, a regional manager for NERCC, described Timberland’s misclassification of workers as flagrant, with the company, for instance, hiring even the foreman for the Bowdoin project as an independent contractor 

“The description of what a foreman does is ‘gives direction.’ You can’t be independent and give direction,” said Leavitt. “They’re being bold on how they’re breaking the law, and it’s destroying the industry.” 

Wages for independent contractors are not taxed like employee wages, meaning state and federal revenues take a substantial hit when workers are misclassified, with Maine losing almost $3 million of revenue in 2005 due to worker misclassification, according to a report by the Bureau of Labor Education at the University of Maine. When the IRS eventually looks to collect back taxes on a misclassified worker’s income, that worker’s wages — which are close to what hourly employees make — often aren’t enough to pay the bills. 

One former Timberland Drywall worker, who spoke under the condition of anonymity to protect his job security, recalled how attracted he was as a young man in the early 2000s to what seemed like big checks. He made $30 an hour, but he says the company failed to tell him he was hired as an independent contractor. Years later, he realized his misclassification as a contractor meant he’d be hit with a massive tax bill. 

“As a young man, I didn’t give much thought to it, so I said I will just skip that year on taxes. I got caught years later and the taxes I owed then were almost 100 times more than I originally owed,” he said. “I’m still paying $168 a week levied out of my check for God knows how long to pay those stupid taxes I got screwed on when I was young.” 

Timberland has also been cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration three times since 2013 for worker safety violations, incurring initial penalties of roughly $15,000. 

In one of a few major labor victories in Maine this year, Gov. Janet Mills signed LD 1524, a bill sponsored by Senate President Troy Jackson (D – Allagash), into law this June. The law endows the state attorney general’s office and the state DOL with the power to secure workers’ lost wages from employers — including for those workers misclassified as independent contractors. 

But while the state moves ahead on empowering workers, BLA leaders say Bowdoin — which has been accused of misclassifying its own hourly workers and paying low wages — is behind the curve. 

“Bowdoin is looking at the bottom line and not looking at the labor practices,” said Diego Grossmann, a junior Bowdoin student from Holden, Maine and co-founder of BLA. “Bowdoin’s a place that has the luxury to choose the kinds of companies it works with — it has an enormous endowment — and we can put our values into action by choosing companies that have fair labor practices and standards.” 

Bowdoin has not commented on the claims made by the NERCC or the BLA. 

The preceding originally appeared on mainebeacon.com, a website and podcast created by progressive group the Maine People’s Alliance.