Wage theft targeting immigrant women common on city construction sites

For a few weeks earlier this year, Maria Reyes, a recent arrival from Ecuador, installed, repaired and finished drywall at a 23-story residential project under construction on West 96th Street on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. 

Reyes, 28, worked 56-hour weeks in her first three weeks on the job before dropping to 40 hours for the next two weeks. She was to be paid $25 an hour for the first 40 hours and then $37.50 for the overtime.

Out of the $6,800 she was owed for the five weeks she worked, her employer, KEP Construction, a Bronx-based LLC, paid her $2,600. They reneged on the rest. 

“They gave us checks without funds,” Reyes, a Bronx resident, said in Spanish at a Wednesday morning rally organized by the Brooklyn-based Worker’s Justice Project nearby the building where she worked. Reyes said about 15 other women were similarly employed and unpaid by KEP Construction. “I hope we can still get paid,” she added. 

The Worker’s Justice Project, which advocates on behalf of low-wage immigrant workers in the city, filed a labor standards complaint with the state's Department of Labor on Reyes’ behalf as well as for dozens of other workers defrauded by unscrupulous contractors. 

Attempts to reach KEP Construction, which was first registered with the state in August 2022, were unsuccessful. The project’s general contractor, Urban Atelier Group, did not respond to an emailed inquiry regarding KEP. 

The Worker’s Justice Project said dozens of workers are owed a total of more than $100,000 in unpaid wages from five employers. Most of the laborers are women recently emigrated from Guatemala, Mexico and Ecuador who worked on construction projects all over the city. 

“This theft isn't just numbers — it's food taken from families' tables, unpaid rent and deferred dreams. It's a stark reminder of the exploitation faced by our city's most essential workers, particularly our recently arrived neighbors,” Armary Pérez, the director of the Construction Workers United project at the Worker’s Justice Project, said at the rally. The women, Pérez said, “came seeking a better life.”

“They've worked tirelessly across New York's boroughs, only to be denied their rightfully earned wages,” she said. 

An official with LUINA Laborers Local 1010, Max Barton, said KEP Construction was a particularly disreputable employer, noting that it had failed to pay some $50,000 in workers’ wages on the West 96th Street project.

“KEP Construction LLC, wage theft; KEP Construction LLC, bad actor; KEP Construction LLC, unscrupulous contractor,” he bellowed before leading the workers in cries of “justicia ahora!” — justice now! — at the rally.

“My unit cares about all workers, union and non-union,” Barton said. “Local 1010 and our membership stand united in solidarity with immigrant workers facing wage theft at the hands of unscrupulous contractors.”  

About 60 of the workers and their supporters converged near the sitewith signs, banners and whistles near the mini-tower, which is now almost complete. 

The West 96th Street rally was a first stop on what the advocates called a “Road to Justice caravan” that from there headed to six other construction sites in the city where the workers were employed and for which they are still owed wages or contractors’ businesses. Among them were the offices of Francisco Giron Construction, a Brooklyn-based LLC. That company is alleged to have hired recently arrived immigrants to work on construction projects and then failed to pay them on numerous occasions. 

The WJP said it had yet to receive responses from the Department of Labor regarding the labor complaints. In an emailed response to an inquiry from The Chief, a DOL spokesperson said the Worker’s Justice Project’s claims were either being reviewed or investigated by the department’s Division of Labor Standards. Citing their ongoing nature, the spokesperson, identified only as Aaron C., said the department could not provide further details.

The Worker’s Justice Project's Armary Pérez addressed the West 96th Street rally.

Lawmakers' efforts

Wage theft became particularly prevalent during the pandemic. According to advocates and lawmakers, shady employers statewide pocket about $1 billion annually by not paying workers what they are owed. 

Last year, state legislators passed and Governor Kathy Hochul enacted legislation that added wages to the definition of property in the state’s penal law larceny statute, which reclassified wage theft from a low-felony crime to one with increased penalties. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who earlier in the year launched a Worker Protection Unit to broaden investigations and prosecutions of wage theft and other instances of worker exploitation, had pushed for the law, which also had the backing of unions.

City Comptroller Brad Lander has also increased his oversight of labor law and is looking to expand his office’s powers in that domain. 

But legal loopholes can stymie officials from recouping what's owed to workers. For instance, business owners can escape culpability and financial obligations by transferring their assets, including personal property. 

Bills sponsored by Queens State Sen. Jessica Ramos and Upper West Side Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal would enable victims of wage theft to put a lien on an employer’s assets until legal proceedings conclude and, if business owners are found liable, judgments are paid out. 

But the Securing Wages Earned Against Theft, or SWEAT, Act, has been on lawmakers’ dockets for at least five years. Although it reached then-Governor Andrew Cuomo’s desk in 2020, Cuomo vetoed it, citing possible constitutional questions. Ramos and Rosenthal have since reintroduced the bill several times but it has remained in limbo.

Earlier this year, Ramos, the chair of the Senate’s Labor Committee, introduced a “Wage Theft Deterrence Package” that among other things would empower state authorities to issue stop-work orders for violations of state labor law, including those governing pay and hours. The legislation did not get out of committee during lawmakers' last session. 

For now, enforcement and prosecutions of wage theft falls mainly to the Department of Labor . But critics have asserted that the DOL has been slow or even disinclined to investigate and prosecute employers accused of withholding pay — and ensuring that workers get the money they’re owed.

Ramos’ legislative package was to an extent a response to reporting by Documented and ProPublica that revealed the DOL had failed to recover $79 million of the $126 million, or 63 percent, of wages it determined had been stolen from workers between 2017 and 2021.  

Wednesday’s tour of construction sites and contractors’ businesses was in part designed to speed up the DOL’s investigation into the Worker’s Justice Project’s claims. The advocates also want the department to issue statements of interest protecting the workers, some of whom are undocumented, against retaliation, Pérez said. 

“Today, we stand united — workers, advocates, elected officials and community members — to demand justice, dignity and respect,” she said before she and dozens of others headed to the caravan's next stop. "Together, we can build a New York where every worker, regardless of immigration status, is treated with dignity and paid fairly.” 

richardk@thechieleader.com

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