Grand Rapids Reporter

The editor of national legal journal Legal Newsline said a U.S. Department of Labor investigation into Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Forge Industrial Staffing is taking a big toll on the company.

“You couldn't have a worse blow to your business relationship than the U.S. Department of Labor showing up at a company with which you have a contract,” editor John O’Brien told the American Legal Record Podcast. “These companies are facing no investigation, no allegation, but now all of a sudden they'll have Department of Labor investigators walking and looking through their plants.”

“So it's very unfair to those clients,” said O’Brien. “The damage to Forge is real.”

O’Brien said the that Forge claimed in court records that the company has lost 17 clients and $9.5 million in annual revenue as a result of the probe. The company said it is "struggling to break even."

His full discussion on the podcast can be found at Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As Grand Rapids Reporter reported previously, "A Wyoming woman who used a fake identification card and fraudulent social security number 12 years ago to obtain work while underage is now blaming the company who hired her for accepting the documents."

That’s according to a Nov. 14 filing by Forge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan.

Nubia K. Malacara, now 27, duped Forge by using documents representing that she was age-eligible when she was not.

“Ms. Malacara reported a date of birth of November 10, 1992 in her application materials, which would have made her 19 at the time,” Forge said.

It said company records show Malacara worked as a “temporary worker for three days in 2011,” assigned to Hearthside, which makes cereal and snacks.

The filing said Malacara applied and was hired for an administrative job with Forge in 2021, at age 25, using a different date of birth and social security number. 

“After working for less than a year, Ms. Malacara voluntarily resigned without notice in July 2022,” Forge said. “Ms. Malacara deleted all of her company e-mail folders before she resigned.”

Six months later, Malacara was quoted in a New York Times story claiming that Forge and Hearthside were “knowingly employing minors.”

The story led to an investigation of Forge by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).

As part of that investigation, the DOL issued a subpoena that seeks permission to conduct interviews on-site at Forge's clients. This has led to the exodus of clients from the staffing company which, in turn, has led to company layoffs.

O'Brien said that court records show emails from the DOL to Forge in which the department offered to rescind the on-site visits in exchange for Forge providing “packets of employee information, stuff from their applications, the actual IDs, stuff like that.” That offer, however, was rescinded six days later in an email that said "the acting secretary has taken the offer off the table," said O'Brien.

The "acting secretary" is Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su, whose nomination to the cabinet post failed to pass the U.S. Senate this past summer. President Biden reportedly decided to "indefinitely" keep Su in the past as "acting director," reported Politico, a move that was criticized by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

Founded in 1995, Forge primarily serves industrial manufacturers. It operates 12 offices across Michigan and Indiana.