Company underpaid workers by $124,000 on senior affordable housing project in Hialeah

David J. Neal
·2 min read

A construction company based in Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale has paid $124,075 in back pay and benefits after a hat trick of federal violations on senior citizen public housing in Hialeah.

The U.S. Department of Labor announced that Roepnack Corp. owed that cash and benefits to 20 workers, an average of $6,203.75 per employee. State records say Roepnack is run by Bradford Smith out of Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale.

Roepnack worked on Seminola Development, a Hialeah apartment building for low-income seniors funded by the Hialeah Housing Authority, bank loans and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

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Here’s how Roepnack failed to meet its obligations, according to Labor’s Wage and Hour investigators:

▪ The HUD money put Roepnack under the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts, which say contractors on federally funded projects have to pay laborers and mechanics “no less than the locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits for corresponding work on similar projects in the area.”

Roepnack didn’t do that for ironworkers, forklift operators, carpenters, truck drivers and laborers.

▪ Roepnack “failed to pay employees overtime when they worked more than 40 hours in a workweek, and failed to record the number of hours employees worked.”

The overtime pay failure is a Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) violation and the record-keeping violation (incongruous in a business with so many hourly employees) is a two-for-one violation — FLSA and Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act.

“All contractors and sub-contractors must ensure they understand all of the requirements associated with performing work on federally funded construction projects,” Wage and Hour Division Miami District Director Tony Pham said in a statement.

Employers that find they’ve committed overtime or minimum wage violations can self-report through the Payroll Audit Independent Determination (PAID) program.

For online information on how to file a complaint, go to the Wage and Hour complaint section of the Department of Labor website. Miami’s Wage and Hour Division office can be reached at 305-598-6607.

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