Migliaccio & Rathod LLP is investigating whether janitors who cleaned the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant at 5000 Overlook Avenue SW were paid all wages and benefits required by District law.
What is the issue?
Blue Plains is a massive, around-the-clock facility that requires workers to clean offices, bathrooms, locker rooms, operational areas, and other spaces on regular schedules. Workers may have been entitled to more than the ordinary D.C. minimum wage because the cleaning work was performed under a government or public-authority service contract.
D.C. authorities previously alleged that Clean Team Janitorial Service underpaid workers assigned to DC Water facilities between 2020 and 2023. Clean Team agreed to pay more than $220,000 in wages and damages to 33 workers. Federal labor records separately identify Blue Plains as one of the DC Water facilities where Clean Team employed cleaners.
Workers may have experienced:
- An hourly wage below the rate required by the DC Water cleaning contract.
- Missing health-and-welfare or fringe-benefit payments.
- Unpaid time spent obtaining supplies, traveling between areas, receiving assignments, or completing end-of-shift work.
- Automatic meal deductions even when employees continued working.
- Overtime calculated using an artificially low hourly rate.
- Incomplete or inaccurate wage statements.
Signs you may be affected
- You worked as a janitor, cleaner, custodian, porter, floor technician, or other building-services employee at the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant.
- You worked for Clean Team or another cleaning or facilities contractor rather than directly for DC Water.
- You worked before or after your scheduled shift without being paid for all of your time, including time spent obtaining supplies, traveling between work areas, or completing required cleanup.
- You worked more than 40 hours in a week but did not receive proper overtime pay.
- Your paycheck did not include the contract wage, required fringe benefits, or all hours you worked.
- Your employer automatically deducted meal breaks even though you continued working or remained responsible for your assigned duties.
Workers may not know which company held the main DC Water contract. D.C. law may allow workers to pursue both their direct employer and companies higher in the contracting chain.
If you performed janitorial, cleaning, sanitation, porter, floor-care, or other facilities-maintenance work at Blue Plains and believe you were not paid correctly, please contact Migliaccio & Rathod LLP through the form below, by email at [email protected], or by telephone at (202) 470-3520.