120914 el paso city council story

A company that received federal dollars allegedly committed wage theft.

Beltran Electrical is a subcontractor hired by general contractor Urban Associates – which has a $30 million dollar contract to build a Sun Metro operations facility on the East Side.

The City says there’s discrepancies with six workers.

Some allegedly didn’t appear on the payroll at all, while others were paid as $9.50-an-hour laborers when they should have gotten electrician journeymen pay of as much as $28 an hour.

Beltran’s attorney says the employees were hired as assistants to electricians and no one notified payroll when they were asked to do electrician’s work.

“Every allegation has resulted in a payment to the worker, without question by Beltran, without challenge. Because we, like you all, want to see these workers paid,” said Kimberly Miller, attorney for Beltran.

City Rep. Michiel Noe said, “We want to protect the little guy. We want to protect the worker who’s having to bring home the bacon for the family. And if there are employees who are routinely doing things like that, then they need to be punished.”

Someone who doesn’t want to get punished for this: The general contractor who hired Beltran.

“How can we be penalized when what happened there was out of our control?” asked Michael Montes of Urban Associates.

City Rep. Larry Romero didn’t accept that answer.

“When you’re on the top and you’re the contractor that wins the bid then you better make sure the people you hire do what they said they’re going to do and pay the right wages,” Romero said.

City officials say payroll discrepancies aren’t uncommon in big projects like this but there was one big red flag on this one.

“What’s interesting about this one is the allegation of the funds being deposited into a 401k,” said City Attorney Sylvia Borunda Firth.

City Rep. Cortney Niland said it doesn’t pass the smell test.

“You’ve got to be real dumb not to see what’s going on there,” Niland said.

The City is going to withhold $35,000 as a wage theft fine from the general contractor until the Department of Labor concludes an investigation into Beltran.

If Beltran is convicted of wage theft in this instance then the company may not be able to work on future City projects.