Worker killed in fall at downtown building may have suffered unfair wages, safety issues
Kansas City Council members announced concerns Thursday over whether the former downtown AT&T building where a worker plunged to his death had been providing laborers with fair compensation and the proper safety resources.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Kansas City police have launched an investigation into the death of a Nicaraguan man. He was brought to the metro from an Indianapolis temp agency, Infinity Resources, to work on the building’s renovations. It is believed his name was Jose Sanchez, according to Councilman Kevin O’Neill.
He left behind two children: A 13 year old and a 17 year old. Manny Abarca, executive director of the Fair Contracting Alliance, previously alleged the man appeared to be an undocumented worker.
During a Thursday morning press conference, O’Neill partnered with fellow council members Lindsey French, Melissa Patterson-Hazley, Darrell Curls, Andrea Bough and Johnathan Duncan to voice their concerns over the safety of workers operating on the project site.
Rumors of inadequate safety equipment and, due to the building’s old age, exposure to potentially hazardous materials within the site’s insulation have been circulating since the man’s death, he said.
“We have around 400 jobs at any given time that are incentivized by the city. And we don’t have enough people going out and checking if abuses are taking place.”
O’Neill announced that the city has hired a third party contractor to investigate such workplace abuses.
In a first for the city, according to O’Neill, the contractor will work with the metro’s department of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity to interview labor brokers, check company payrolls and inspect safety regulations at the sites of projects receiving public funding, including that of the former AT&T building.
“It’s always been a shortfall here, and its never been a priority,” O’Neill said.
The contractor’s employees will begin work in October and undergo training in September, after the installment of the CREO department’s new director, Jamie Guillen.
No prevailing wages
In the weeks following the man’s death, O’Neill said, he has also learned of a “loophole” in a year-old ordinance that may have allowed the developers, the Bernstein Company, to forgo paying the workers renovating the building a fair wage.
The project renovating the downtown building into condos received public funding through historic preservation credits and other city incentives. Due to the historic status, O’Neill said, the developers were not required to pay employees a “prevailing” wage, otherwise known as a state mandated minimum wage.
“Apparently we made a mistake... We need to go and rectify that,” O’Neill said.
“If we had a prevailing wage on this job, they wouldn’t have been able to hire many of these low income workers.”
He said he plans to amend the ordinance to ensure a prevailing wage is required on projects over a certain amount of money.
“Anything this big, especially where you’re working vertical like that... forget the fall down the elevator shaft, the ramifications of working with the potential carcinogens... It could have significant long term effects,” he said.
It’s still unclear whether there will be penalties for the building, which has resumed construction, according to O’Neill.
He said he would not be surprised if all that comes out of the man’s death is a workman’s compensation complaint, which runs the risk of a $5,000 penalty against the company.
“That’s why the city needs to keep going on this and finding out exactly what we can do to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
This story was originally published August 10, 2023 at 4:52 PM.
