First ruling of its kind narrows who gets paid when contractors break the rules
Illinois appellate court strips $526,500 from union's misclassification win, ruling only workers – not unions – can collect statutory damages under state law.
A bricklayers' union just watched a six-figure damages award vanish on appeal, even after the trial court entered a default judgment as a sanction against the contractor for ignoring discovery.
On May 20, 2026, the Illinois Appellate Court ruled that unions and other interested parties cannot collect statutory damages or attorney fees under section 60 of the Illinois Employee Classification Act. That right belongs only to the workers whose rights were actually violated.
The decision is the first published opinion on the question. It resets how worker misclassification claims will be prosecuted across Illinois.
Here is the story. In 2020, Administrative District Council 1, a union representing masonry workers, sued Brickster Inc. and its owner Grzegorz Przada. The union alleged the company misclassified between 30 and 50 workers as independent contractors between 2018 and 2022, denying them overtime and other rights, avoiding taxes, and gaining an unfair edge over law-abiding contractors who paid into union benefit funds. The union sued as an interested party under the Act.
Brickster and Przada stopped engaging with the case. In March 2023, the Cook County Circuit Court entered a default judgment as a sanction, finding the defendants had systematically failed to meet their discovery obligations. In an April 2023 deposition, Przada admitted he provided the materials, supplies, and equipment for the workers, monitored and directed their work, scheduled their hours, and provided training when he saw fit.
The numbers stacked up fast. The union identified a minimum of 1,053 paychecks issued to misclassified workers between 2018 and 2022, with each check counting as a separate violation. At $500 per violation, that came to $526,500 in statutory damages against Przada, plus $147,265.92 in attorney fees and costs. Brickster Inc. was hit with a separate amended final judgment of $673,765.92 in October 2023.
The appellate court then reset the math.
The court read section 60(a) of the Act literally. Interested parties can file suit. But the statute reserves the listed remedies for a person whose rights have been violated under the Act by an employer or entity. The union was the former, not the latter. If lawmakers had wanted unions to collect, the court said, they would have written it that way.
The judges also rejected the union's argument that limiting recovery would hollow out the private right of action. Courts do not rewrite statutes to fix perceived gaps. Policy fixes belong with the legislature.
What survived: the attorney fees and costs awarded under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 219(c) for the discovery violations. The appeal as to Brickster Inc. itself was dismissed because the company missed the 30-day deadline to appeal.
For HR leaders, the ruling cuts two ways. Misclassification risk under the Act has not gone away. Discovery sanctions alone cost Przada more than $147,000, and a worker with a direct claim can still pursue the full set of remedies under section 60: lost wages, liquidated damages, up to $500 per violation, and attorney fees. But the union playbook for chasing those damages just got harder. The plaintiff with rights under the Act is the worker, not the organization watching the industry.
The Illinois Department of Labor still investigates complaints, and interested parties can still pursue 10% bounty awards under section 40 of the Act after the Department imposes a civil penalty. House Bill 2794, introduced in February 2025, was already pending to amend section 60, but the appellate court declined to factor pending legislation into its analysis.
The construction industry is the immediate target of the Act, but the misclassification debate is national, and the legal mechanics of who can sue matter wherever this question turns up. In Illinois, the answer is now clear.
