Workers on public project were paid at least $18 per hour less than required by law
TUKWILA – Governor Bob Ferguson and the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries announced today that the Highway 99 tunnel subcontractor Glacier Northwest Inc. will pay more than $370,000 in back pay to dozens of employees it underpaid during work on the Seattle tunnel project.
Glacier Northwest paid the affected workers at least $18 per hour less than the fair wages required by law. The company must pay 46 employees, who are owed between $90 and more than $30,000, by July 31, 2025. The employees are getting back every dollar of their underpaid wages.
“Critical public projects depend on the hard work of Washingtonians,” Ferguson said. “My office will work in partnership with L&I to ensure employers uphold their obligations to those workers.”
“This settlement is going to get these workers the wages they earned,” said Joel Sacks, L&I Director. “It can be really challenging for workers, by themselves, to get money owed to them. L&I is here to make sure workers have someone fighting for them.”
L&I enforces the state’s prevailing wage law, which protects workers by setting wages for specific work on publicly funded construction projects. The law helps ensure that contractors have a level playing field when bidding on public projects.
Glacier Northwest contracted with Seattle Tunnel Partners, the public project’s prime contractor, for about $28 million. Glacier disposed of 2.2 million tons of dirt and other material the tunnel-boring machine Bertha excavated. The company took the dirt to the Mats Mats Quarry near Port Ludlow between 2012 and 2017.
Workers running cranes, skid loaders, dump trucks, dozers and excavators were paid $27.69–$31.34 per hour. As a public project, they should have received $49.48 per hour.
Lengthy litigation and settlement
In December 2018, L&I issued a notice of violation against the company, based on a complaint from the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 302. By 2023, after rising through the appeals process and COVID-caused delays, the matter reached the state Court of Appeals, which upheld that the work as part of a public project that should have paid prevailing wages.
L&I and Glacier entered into a legally binding resolution on Dec. 30, 2024.
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