Court records show the concrete company state Sen. Jack Martins (R-Mineola) co-owns has been charged several times with violating labor agreements, but he says all the disputes were “resolved amicably.”
J&A Concrete Corp., the firm Martins’ father founded in 1971, was named in nine lawsuits brought by four different labor benefit funds since 2007 for allegedly not following collective bargaining agreements.
In the suits, first reported in October by the New York Daily News, the funds alleged Martins’ company failed to pay or made late payments into employee benefit funds. One case resulted in a default judgment against J&A, six were dismissed and two ended in settlements.
Martins, J&A’s vice president and head of the state Senate’s labor committee since January, said in a written statement that the complaints resulted from “minor accounting discrepancies” after unions’ annual audits of its contractors’ books.
“J&A has been a union shop in good standing that has employed union workers since its inception over 40 years ago,” Martins said in the statement.
An unnamed Senate labor committee member told the Daily News “issues with (one’s) company could potentially be a problem” for the committee’s chair.
But Teamsters Local 282 President Tom Gesualdi, who was a trustee to one of the funds involved in the suits, said these court filings are part of labor funds’ “due diligence” in routine benefit disputes.
Sometimes it takes a while for the funds and contractors like J&A to get their benefit numbers in line, and going to court after a certain amount of time is part of trustees’ fiduciary responsibilities.
Anthony Macagnone, a Long Island team leader with the Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters who has known J&A for 30 years, said neither he nor the carpenters’ union have had any issues in dealing with the company.
“I don’t know of anybody who ever got beat out of a nickel in benefits from J&A Concrete,” said Macagnone, a Republican who also serves as an Oyster Bay town councilman.
State financial disclosure records indicate Martins’ position with J&A paid him a salary between $50,000 and $75,000 in 2014.
His 19-percent share in the company, records say, was worth between $750,000 and $1 million last year.
He gets a $12,500 stipend as chair of the labor committee, which oversees issues related to state labor laws.
