The roots of the construction employer tax fraud crisis are deep, going back decades. That’s why our fight against crooked contractors and the systems that encourage them has persisted—it takes time to dismantle injustice and rebuild an industry to be proud of.

Once again, UBC members and supporters will take to the streets during Tax Fraud Days of Action, April 6 – April 18, to stand up for exploited workers, honest contractors and ordinary, law-abiding taxpayers.

We continue this fight because it’s the right thing to do and because we know we are making a difference. Led by UBC councils and members, the Tax Fraud Days of Action campaign is:

• helping workers stand up, speak out and recover stolen wages;

• leading to better opportunities for law-abiding contractors and their employees to secure work;

• seeing enactment of new “upper-tier” contractor liability laws, so that general contractors, owners and others can be held responsible for the illegal actions of their subcontractors, including low-road labor brokers. These laws now exist in ten states and the District of Columbia.

We need to keep up the momentum.

By standing up, we can enact more upper-tier liability measures in the U.S. and Canada. We can persuade insurance commissions and legislatures to reform insurer practices that enable workers’ compensation premium fraud. And we can support district attorneys, attorneys general and law enforcement agencies as they prosecute cheaters.

The stakes are high and the damage infects the entire industry.

Illegal tactics include outright wage theft, paying workers off the books, tax fraud, labor trafficking, money laundering, child labor, racketeering, and failing to report payroll information to avoid paying premiums for workers’ compensation and other obligations.

Recent studies have shown that up to $2.1 million U.S. construction workers are illegally misclassified or paid off the books.  Misclassification alone costs individual workers from $10,000 to $17,000 per year. And some 39 percent of construction workers’ families rely on public assistance to make ends meet, costing taxpayers $28 billion per year.

In Canada, the residential construction industry contributes nearly 33 percent, or $23.7 billion, to the nation’s $72.4 billion underground economy, which is responsible for $3.1 billion in lost provincial and federal revenues.

In the U.S., a study by The Century Foundation disclosed $10 billion a year in state and federal tax fraud, $1.9 billion in overtime wage theft and $5 billion in unpaid workers’ compensation premiums.

Many who are cheated out of wages also suffer when cheating contractors operate unsafe jobsites. Employers who have cheated on their workers’ compensation premium obligations often shamelessly leave it to injured workers to pay for their own medical treatment—or the costs are passed on to the rest of us.

Insurance companies recover their fraud losses by raising premiums for responsible contractors, making them even less competitive against the cheaters.

We seek prosperous communities and a one-way ticket to the middle class for carpenters and their families. But that is not going to happen unless we stand up and demand it.

Join us during this year’s Tax Fraud Days of Action events, April 6 – 18. Learn more at StopTaxFraud.net/StandUp.