Area firm facing charges on wages

The Jackson County prosecuting attorney has accused a Lee’s Summit company and its owner of not paying three workers a prevailing wage for work done last summer on Arrowhead Stadium.

The prosecutor’s office charged the Rycoblake Corp. and Gerald L. Chevalier with 16 misdemeanor counts of failing to pay the prevailing hourly wage on public works.

Three workers were employed by Rycoblake, operating as Aardvark Air Duct Cleaning Service. Chevalier is the owner of Aardvark.

They had worked on the Arrowhead training facility from June 27 to Aug. 22, 2008. They performed air-duct installation and cleaning services.

The workers were not paid the minimum prevailing wage rate for seven straight days from June 27 to July 3. Certified payroll forms claim they were each paid $20.65 per hour, according to court records. They should have been paid $22.45.

The workers told authorities Chevalier paid them.

But one worker told authorities he was actually paid $15 an hour, another said he was paid $12 an hour and another $10.

The other worker wasn’t adequately paid for Aug. 19 and 20.

Also, the workers were allegedly cheated out of fringe benefit payments and overtime work done on the weekends, according the court documents.

The workers should have been paid a minimum of time and one-half their hourly rates for the weekends. Also, the company should have been paid double the hourly wage for a portion of time they worked on Sunday.

Missouri law requires all contractors and subcontractors employed by a public body, in this case Jackson County, engaged in construction of a public works project must pay all employees the prevailing wage for regular time, holiday time and overtime work.

The prevailing wage order was set by the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations for the ongoing Jackson County Truman Sports Complex renovation project.

The pay discrepancies violated the state’s prevailing wage law in three ways, according to the papers. The company and Chevalier allegedly failed to comply with the state’s prevailing wage, its overtime wage and the misclassification of workers.

Calls to Aardvark and Chevalier were not immediately returned.