The state labor commissioner urged Maine workers who have been misclassified as “independent contractors” to tell their stories at a series of public hearings next month.

“The reason that it’s important to have people show up is because we have been fighting an uphill battle in our state to get people to take this issue seriously,” Labor Commissioner Laura Fortman said Thursday during the Maine AFL-CIO’s 27th biennial convention. The convention began Thursday and winds up today at the Ramada Inn.

“The only way we’re going to change that is by getting real people’s stories out there,” Fortman said during Thursday’s banquet.

According to information posted on the Maine AFL-CIO’s Web site, misclassifying workers as independent contractors instead of wage employees “sidesteps critical wage and hour laws, cheating workers and the state. This is a huge problem in Maine.”

The organization said that from 1999 to 2002, at least one in seven, or 14 percent, annually of the state’s construction employers are estimated to have misclassified workers as independent contractors. The AFL-CIO pegs the actual number of affected workers as at least 3,213 over that period.

The problem, the AFL-CIO says, is costing the state “millions of dollars in tax revenues annually.”
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