TROUBLESHOOTERS: Workers say they’ve never been paid for construction job

BRUNSWICK COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — It’s not easy to find a job in this economy, but two local men finally found work doing construction on the renovations at the Leland Food Lion. They’ve done the work. The problem is, about six weeks have passed, and they’re still waiting on a pay check.

Renovations at the Leland Food Lion have been going on for months with much of the work going on at night so the store can still be open to customers during the day. Randy Earwood and his 75-year-old father Sammie were pulling all-nighters to help with the renovations. Everything was fine until payday rolled around.

“He’d be promising us every day, ‘Oh, I got your check. It’ll be there tomorrow night,’ or ‘I got your money. I’m gonna come down and bring you the cash. I’ll be there,’ and he wouldn’t even show up,” Sammie Earwood said. Between the two of them, Sammie and Randy say they’re owed almost $3,000.

John S. Clark Construction is the general contractor. Some of the subcontractors, Shawn Spears, of S & J Construction and Jeff Krol of Krol Construction hired the Earwoods to help with the work.

“I’m sure they did get their money, but they didn’t pay us,” Sammie said.

“It puts me behind on bills and all,” Randy said. “I got bills just like everybody else. They pay their bills. I need to pay mine.”

We called Krol two weeks ago for an explanation, and he promised us the check was in the mail. The Earwoods say that’s the same thing he’s always told them, and they’ve yet to see the money. As for Spears, he says he never got paid in full for the work he did, and in turn, he hasn’t been able to make payroll.

The only thing we can say for sure is a lot of people are passing the buck, and some of the people who did the hard labor, never got paid for it.

“Makes me scared to go out and work for another contractor,” Randy said. “What am I going to do if I work for another contractor? Are they gonna do the same thing? Over 30-some years of working, I’ve never had the problem of collecting my money.”

The Earwoods has filed a complaint with the Department of Labor, and we’ve confirmed there is an active investigation into this situation for failure to pay wages.