Attorneys for the Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) AFL-CIO filed a complaint on Aug. 10 with the Securities and Exchange Commission charging one of the biggest temporary employment agencies with making "seriously misleading statements" to the SEC and to investors in the publicly-held company.

The complaint alleges that Labor Ready Inc., which operates 839 offices in 49 states, Puerto Rico, Canada and the United Kingdom, has continually reported that its "more mature" offices are showing increased revenues, when exactly the opposite may be true.

The complaint cites transcripts of the company's Chief Financial Officer Joe Sambataro saying that sales at offices three years and older have "declined year over year by 5 percent" while sales at offices open two years or less have grown 10 percent, and two years and older at only 1.4 percent.

"[Labor Ready] has continuously announced in 10K filings and elsewhere that a key element of its strategy is to increase its number of offices, claiming the temporary help industry was fragmented, but economies of scale were available," the complaint says. It asks the SEC to require the company to file amended 10Ks and 10Qs, to provide corrective information to its investors to "make whole" investors who bought stock in reliance upon the misleading statements. According to the attorneys for the BCTD, there has been no reply from the company.