Three carpenters who worked on the rebuild of Commodore John Rodgers Elementary/Middle School in East Baltimore have settled a federal wage lawsuit for $150,000, resolving claims that they were paid at a construction laborer's rate instead of the higher wage owed to skilled carpenters on the taxpayer-funded project.
Arnulfo Cabrera, Elmer Callejas and Yovani Gutierrez filed suit in the U.S. District Court of Maryland against Tobar Construction, DC Construction and general contractor CAM Construction, alleging they were shortchanged on prevailing wages required for the $66 million school project, according to WBFF Fox45 Baltimore. A March 2026 memorandum opinion detailed the scale of the alleged shortfall: carpenters on the project were entitled to a prevailing wage of $33.21 per hour plus $14.03 in fringe benefits, for a total of $47.24 an hour, but plaintiffs said they were mostly paid at the common laborer rate of $20.81 per hour plus $6.39 in benefits, or $27.20 total, according to court records. That gap works out to just over $20 an hour.
A Single Week's Pay Stub Tells the Story
Court filings offered a concrete example of how the alleged misclassification played out on paper. Plaintiff Elmer Callejas provided payroll stubs showing he worked 47 hours in a single week in July 2025 but was paid at the carpenter rate for only two of those hours, with the remaining 45 hours compensated at the lower common laborer rate, per the same court records.
Under a 2018 amendment to the Maryland Wage Payment and Collection Law, general contractors on construction projects can be held jointly and severally liable for wage nonpayment committed by subcontractors, even without a direct contractual relationship with the affected workers, according to attorneys at BTLG Attorneys At Law. That statute helps explain why CAM Construction, the project's general contractor, was named as a co-defendant alongside subcontractors Tobar Construction and DC Construction.
Lawsuit Grew Well Beyond the Original Three Plaintiffs
The case did not stay limited to its original three named plaintiffs. Following the January 2026 filing, eight additional workers submitted consent notices in federal court to join the lawsuit as opt-in plaintiffs by June 2026, expanding the group of workers alleging underpayment on the project.
Cabrera, Callejas and Gutierrez entered mediation talks in June 2026, and the memorandum resolving the case was filed the following month, per WBFF. Under the settlement, the carpenters will receive $135,000 in unpaid wages for their work renovating the Commodore John Rodgers school, according to the court memorandum, and each of the three named plaintiffs will also receive a $5,000 incentive award. As part of the deal, the plaintiffs must withdraw their claims against the companies once paid in full, per the judge's order. The construction companies and their federal court attorney did not respond to a request for comment, WBFF reported.
Attorney Calls Outcome a Warning on Job Classification
Attorney Mark Hanna said the case underscores that companies must classify employees correctly according to the trade they actually perform, a statement WBFF described as reflecting the settlement's broader significance for construction workers. The outcome was characterized as a victory for the construction workers involved.
Maryland law requires prevailing wage rates on public school construction contracts of $500,000 or more when state funding covers at least 25% of total project costs, a standard set through legislative reforms in 2014 and 2021, according to the Maryland General Assembly Department of Legislative Services. That mandate is what put a prevailing wage floor under the Commodore John Rodgers project in the first place.
A Piece of Baltimore's Billion-Dollar School Rebuilding Push
The Commodore John Rodgers replacement school is being built as a new 112,500-square-foot facility to accommodate growing student enrollment in East Baltimore, with a total budget of $66 million managed by the Maryland Stadium Authority. Construction began in October 2024 and reached a structural topping-out milestone in December 2025, with completion scheduled for December 2026 ahead of a planned reopening in January 2027, per the authority's own project timeline. Students and staff were relocated to swing space at Southeast Middle School in June 2023 while the permanent campus was rebuilt.
The project is one piece of Baltimore's $1.1 billion 21st Century School Buildings Program, a multi-agency partnership formed in 2013 between Baltimore City Public Schools, the Maryland Stadium Authority, the City of Baltimore, and the Interagency Commission on Public School Construction to modernize nearly 30 urban school facilities, according to Shelterforce. A 2025 progress report found the program had awarded $1.36 billion in contracts, achieved more than 33% Minority Business Enterprise participation, and hired over 1,600 local Baltimore City residents across its portfolio, per the Maryland Stadium Authority. The Commodore John Rodgers wage settlement lands as a reminder that even inside a program built to boost local hiring and minority contracting, enforcement of basic wage protections has still depended heavily on workers themselves stepping forward to sue.
