Last year, non-union North Vancouver construction contractor Rotschy racked up more than $200,000 in fines for serious safety and child labor violations after a 16-year-old boy was dragged beneath a trencher and lost both legs. On Jan. 22, the Port of Longview awarded the company a $44.7 million public contract to build and expand railroad tracks.
The 2-1 vote by the elected port commissioners came after local unions packed the room in protest. Arriving for their 9 a.m. meeting, commissioners passed about 30 construction union members mobilized by the Longview/Kelso Building Trades Council who gathered alongside Operating Engineers Local 701’s giant inflatable pig and a banner reading “Shame on Rotschy.” Longshore union members who work at the port also attended.
“This is absolutely shameful for us to move forward with this,” said port commissioner Evan Jones before the vote. Jones, a member of IBEW Local 48, was encouraged by his union to run for port commissioner and won election last year.
But the award to Rotschy was the expected result. Under Washington law, public contracts are supposed to go to the lowest qualified bidder, and Rotschy’s bid of $44,688,463 was the lowest of five — $2.6 million less than a bid by Tapani, and $2.8 million less than union-signatory Scarsella Bros. Port staff had estimated that bids would come in at $51.6 million.
Before the vote, Jones made a motion to throw out all bids and review the bid criteria before sending the project out for re-bid. But neither of the other commissioners supported that. The other commissioners are retired printing company owner Allan Erickson and Republican Washington State Senator Jeff Wilson.
In a 2-1 vote, commissioners approved the staff recommendation to hire Rotschy for the Industrial Rail Corridor Expansion Project. The project is meant to get the Port ready for a new industrial tenant. It includes construction of a six-track rail embankment, two new 8,500-foot tracks, track operation systems, lighting, stormwater culverts, and treatment facilities.
In Washington, contractors can be debarred from bidding on public works projects for violations of state prevailing wage laws; electrical, plumbing, and elevator codes; apprenticeship program requirements; and contractor registration requirements. But they can’t be debarred for child labor or worker safety violations, even when those violations are willful and egregious.
In Rotschy’s case, an investigation by the Washington Department of Labor and Industries found that the company had allowed seven minors to operate on or near prohibited machines at least 35 times; had worked eight minors more hours than state law allows and during school hours on more than 150 occasions; and had denied 11 workers meal breaks at least 45 times. The $51,800 fine for those citations was the second-highest fine L&I had given for youth labor violations in the past decade.
But most egregious was the case of the 16-year-old who lost both legs on a Rotschy work site in La Center in 2023: Unattended, he was assigned to use a trenching machine that’s prohibited for minors to use, and he wasn’t properly trained to use it. L&I fined Rotschy $156,259 and classified those as “willful” violations — meaning the company knew the law and chose to violate it. Rotschy had already received one of L&I’s largest ever fines for child labor standards in 2019, after another teenage worker was injured working near a machine minors aren’t allowed to operate.
