When Pérez’s partner sought death benefits from G-4 Services, the local staffing contractor that had hired him to work for Thoma-Sea, G-4 rebuffed her. “Pérez was a self-employed independent contractor and thus a claim for death benefits is not compensable,” a lawyer for the company wrote in May. G-4 contends that Pérez “wasn’t working at the time of his death” even though his corpse was found in the ship with his welding equipment.
[...]
Employers with federal contracts are supposed to ascertain workers’ eligibility — and ensure subcontractors do the same — using the government’s online E-Verify system, which checks identity information like Social Security numbers against federal databases. But experts say E-Verify makes it easy for workers to provide false information, and government agencies rarely monitor compliance with these rules.
[...]
G-4 is disputing the benefits claim, citing Peréz’s ineligibility as an independent contractor, saying his partner was ineligible because they were not legally married, and claiming the sudden death of a healthy 20-year-old was not caused by his job. His death, a medical review conducted at the request of G-4 argued, “occurred while he was working but was not caused by workplace related factors or activities.”
So the problem here is a shady subcontractor company which hires undocumented immigrants as "independent contractors", and probably doesn't keep track of whether those workers are working on federal contracts or not, and they're not being audited. These workers are probably uninsurable without valid documentation, so the company will do whatever it can to avoid having to pay out any benefits because they can't actually carry legitimate insurance.
The solutions are:
- Increase the oversight on such companies and enforce rules about identity verification.
- Close the "independent contractor" loophole, forcing all workers to be fully documented and insured through their companies.
*Edit - further thought on this particular situation:
The contractor (Thomas-Sea) violated the contract term which requires the contractor to verify that workers working on the federal contract are eligible (legally documented). Therefore, the contractor has produced a sub-standard product (the ship) which does not meet the terms of the contract. One must wonder which other requirements they have ignored or intentionally violated.
The federal government should refuse to accept completion of the contract/pay for the ship until the issue is resolved. The resolution should be that all workers who have worked on the contract must be legally documented - therefore the contractor should be required to arrange retroactive work visas for any workers attached to the contract who might need them, with no penalization of the workers themselves for not having visas. The contractor should pay to have this process expedited. The family of the dead man should be compensated for the contractor's failure to ensure safe working conditions (again as a term for accepting completion of the contract). The contractor is responsible for the behavior of their subcontractor, so if Thomas-Sea wants to sue G-4 Services for the cost of the above, then that's perfectly fine.