Part I – Common Claims

Construction is one of the largest industries in the country. Jobs in the construction industry can offer a viable pathway to financial security, particularly for workers without a four-year undergraduate degree. My grandfather, who left high school at an early age, worked his entire life in the construction industry. By securing a union job in construction he was able to support his wife and three kids, including sending my mother to college (she was part of the first freshman class of women accepted at her school). Securing a job in construction can provide a worker—and their family—with life-changing opportunities.

But construction remains a male-dominated field. According to an August 2025 report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), even though the number of women working in construction nationally has grown in the past decade, “tradeswomen [still make up] only 4.3 percent of all construction trade workers.”  The same holds true in Massachusetts. The 2025 Massachusetts Workforce Data Report issued by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor & Workforce Development, confirms that women in Massachusetts remain under-represented in the state’s construction industry and that work in construction is a “gendered” job.

Women face several barriers to entering and remaining in the profession. Discrimination and harassment are two of the barriers: women in the industry report worksite hostility and harassment as reasons they consider leaving the profession, and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has identified combatting gender-based discrimination in recruitment and hiring, as one of its Strategic Enforcement Priorities for 2024-2028.

And while the construction industry offers many opportunities for financial stability, it remains plagued with wage and hour violations. The Massachusetts Attorney General Office’s 2025 Labor Day Report states that the construction industry had the second-highest Fair Labor Division enforcement amounts for Fiscal Year 2025. According to the report, the Attorney General Office’s Fair Labor Division issued approximately 300 citations against employers in the construction industry and the office assessed nearly $3.1 million in penalties and restitution against these employers.

Our office regularly represents workers in the construction industry. Through private enforcement of Massachusetts wage and hour and anti-discrimination laws, we seek to contribute to the efforts of government agencies and organizations working to improve opportunities and conditions for women in construction.

In addition to the unpaid wage and overtime cases we handle within the construction industry, some other common claims that our office assesses when working with women in the construction industry include:

Discrimination: An employer cannot make an employment decision based on a candidate or employee’s gender. For example, it is unlawful for an employer to refuse to hire a candidate because she is a woman, to assign fewer hours to an employee because she is a woman or to fail to promote an employee because she is a woman.

Harassment: Anti-discrimination laws also protect employees from certain sex-based harassment. An example of harassment based on sex drawn from the EEOC’s Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace would be “a construction worker on a road crew, [being] subjected to sex-based epithets and other demeaning sex-based language by her supervisor, such as ‘sandwich-maker’ and ‘baby[,]’ [and] disparag[ing remarks from her supervisor about] women’s participation in the construction industry, for example by stating that road construction is ‘a man’s job.’” Sex-based harassment also includes sexual harassment, and can include pregnancy-based harassment (there are also more specific protections in place for pregnant workers, under state and federal law).

Independent Contractor Misclassification: Massachusetts follows a strict employee status test, commonly known as the “ABC test,” which determines whether the worker has a right to employee wage and hour protections such as the right to timely payment of earned wages, the right to minimum wages, the right to overtime, and the right travel expense reimbursement for intraday travel. When an employer misclassifies a worker as an independent contractor (when that worker should be an employee according to the “ABC test”), we refer to it as independent contractor misclassification. Construction work is a commonly misclassified job. According to one recent study, “a typical construction worker, [classified] as an independent contractor, would lose as much as $19,526 per year in income and job benefits compared with what they would have earned as an employee.” Individualized assessment is needed to understand what losses might have occurred due to misclassification.

Prevailing Wage: Prevailing wage refers to mandated hourly rates that construction workers must receive for working on certain public projects. You can read more about our firm’s work on prevailing wage cases, and its connection to independent contractor misclassification.

Retaliation: Too often, workers are afraid to report discrimination, harassment, or wage and hour violations due to fear of retaliation. Anti-discrimination laws forbid employers from retaliating against employees for engaging in “protected conduct,” which refers to conduct that opposes the unlawful discrimination (for example, reporting the unlawful discrimination to HR). Massachusetts wage law also forbids employers from retaliating against employees for asserting their statutory wage and hour rights. M.G.L. c. 149, § 148A (“No employee shall be penalized by an employer in any way as a result of any action on the part of an employee to seek his or her rights under the wages and hours provisions of this chapter.”). Retaliation can take the form of demotion, termination of employment, a reduction in hours, or rescheduling to an undesirable assignment, to name a few examples. These examples are drawn from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Fair Labor Division’s Anti-Retaliation Protections under the Massachusetts Wage and Hour Laws FAQ Sheet.

Medical Leave: Those working in construction have medical leave rights just like other employees in Massachusetts. Here’s how PFML rights and claims work in Massachusetts.

This post only provides a summary of common employment law claims that arise for women in construction. To understand whether you may have a viable claim, feel free to reach out for an individualized assessment.

Author’s Note: The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency responsible for enforcing federal anti-discrimination employment laws, identified combatting discrimination in the construction industry as one of its strategic enforcement priorities for 2024-2028. Much of this post draws on its report, Building for the Future: Advancing Equal Employment Opportunity in the Construction Industry, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Report of Chair Charlotte A. Burrows, May 2023 [“Building for the Future”], which is no longer available online. Other resources from the EEOC on the topic include Knocking Down Walls: Discrimination and Harassment in Construction from the Commission’s May 17, 2022, hearing and “Combating Employment Discrimination in Construction.”