On July 22, SWACCA board member Geoff Furtaw, majority owner of Ceilings, Inc. in Wayne, Pennsylvania, testified before Federal Trade Commission commissioner Alvaro Bedoya to offer a contractor perspective on the anti-competitive impact that employee misclassification has on honest employers in the construction industry at a forum organized by the Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters.

In his testimony, Furtaw echoed several points that SWACCA has pressed on employee misclassification, noting that misclassification is a “willful choice contractors make to disregard wage and hour laws, workers’ compensation laws, unemployment insurance requirements and other basic responsibilities of being an employer for the purpose of gaining an advantage against law-abiding competitors.” Furtaw also noted that by engaging in employee misclassification, “contractors realize tremendous profits and avoid the financial risks that honest employers must accept.”

Furtaw’s testimony followed SWACCA’s submission of a petition to the FTC in June requesting that the agency use its existing 6(b) authority to study the nature, scope and intensity of misclassification in the U.S. commercial construction industry.