shoulda been working and not taking pigs of windows***

Oculus Spirit [97697]

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Illegal labor will undercut all bids, lol.

Jun 26, 2019, 9:14 AM

Back when I did accident investigations I saw it all the time talking to GC's.

Say a GC is building a large high school. $50 million project. Needs an electrical sub for all the electrical work. Gets bids. 5 large companies all bid in around $1.5 million. Jose Fernandez Electric bid is like $800,000. Jose gets the job. He has references too.

Anyway, Jose is an electrician. He has exactly no employees. He has worker's comp insurance in the form of an assigned risk ghost policy listing only himself. He sent his COI to the GC, so he has WC and liability coverage. GC hasn't a clue how many employees he has, or the premium paid. Jose's COI looks just like Apex Electric's COI. Jose pays $1k a year for WC insurance. He goes out and finds 20 buddies to help on this high school project. Other big companies are paying WC for 100+ electricians, to the tune of $100K+ a year, so their bids were higher. They also have employee taxes, and benefits to pay.

Jose does the job with his 20 electrician pals, and HOPES no one is injured or killed. He also pays his employees in cash under the table. No taxes.

And here's the best part...IF someone is injured, the GC is shielded from WC liability and the carrier with the ghost policy is stuck paying the claim. So they try and recoup $50K in premiums from Jose that he illegally avoided, but amazingly, he's disappeared to Mexico. Now, his brother Fernando comes back to the US, gets his own ghost policy, and rinse and repeat.

THIS is how you get underbid every time if you do things the right way. Meanwhile, GC gets to pocket an extra $700K.

And if you think anyone gives a rats ### about this "problem" think again. NCCI sets the format for all COI's issued by agents across the country. The COI lists the insurance carrier, policy number, and WC and liability limits. THAT IS IT. A GC has absolutely zero way, from examining the COI, to determine if it's a ghost policy for one employee, or a policy for a large company with 100 electricians. And the GC doesn't care. Ignorance is bliss in this case. And it would be SO easy to eliminate this problem. Simply list the number of employees for which premium was paid on the COI. ALSO list the STATES where coverage is valid. Many times people use ghost policies across state lines and the GC has no clue they do not have assigned risk coverage under the policy in their state. Two things to eliminate fraud, and you'd think they could or would do something? I've mentioned this to more than a few state legislators, and even a lobbyist for NCCI. Nope. Nothing is done. ON purpose. Something something....wink nod.

Message was edited by: Tiggity®

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Dang, just lost a $400 million project

Well, the award was made last night and the picture was

enjoy the cake

Re: Dang, just lost a $400 million project

Welp obviously incest is rampant in this company...

Was it malfunction junction? Heard they split that into

Naw, this one was in FL

Illegal labor will undercut all bids, lol.

HAHA, LOOSER!!

No, any chance you working on

nah, brah***

Yall do roadway?

Yes.

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