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Rockwood Music Hall Workers Sue Owner for Unpaid Wages

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, November 16, 2023

Employees of Rockwood Music Hall, located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, are suing the venue’s owner, Kenneth Rockwood, for unpaid wages.  The workers state in their complaint that on payday they were often left empty-handed.  Mr. Rockwood often paid them only a portion of their wages or nothing at all.

Rockwood Music Hall, a well-known venue, has featured performances by many artists, including Sara Bareilles, Sting, Norah Jones, Lady Gaga.  The workers, porters who have worked at the performance space since 2011, state that the problem began in 2022, several months before Rockwood Music Hall’s corporate entity, Kenrock Enterprises, filed for bankruptcy and a #PreserveRockwood fundraising campaign was launched.  By then, Mr. Rockwood already owed the workers a significant amount of money for unpaid wages and for years of unpaid overtime.  Yet, Mr. Rockwood did not identify the workers as creditors in bankruptcy filings and did not direct any of the fundraising proceeds toward making them whole.

Meanwhile, in May 2023, Mr. Rockwood opened a new venue, also named Rockwood Music Hall, which is located in Boston.

“It affects us at the end of every week. We need the money to pay gas, electricity, and especially the rent. We cannot plan for anything,” said Roman Moreno Martinez.

“When I found out that he had money to open a new club in Boston but not to pay the workers, it offended me. It showed a lack of respect.  It wasn’t right,” added Felipe Vargas.

“After the workers came to our office with concerns about their unpaid wages, they realized that Mr. Rockwood had also failed to pay them overtime premiums, despite the fact that they nearly always worked over 40 hours per week,” said Alice Davis, their attorney.

The lawsuit, Moreno Martinez, et al. v. Rockwood, S.D.N.Y. (23-cv-10058) was filed November 15, 2023, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.  The suit alleges multiple violations under the Federal Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law.

The lawsuit was filed on the workers’ behalf by attorneys at Catholic Migration Services.  The Workers’ Rights Program offers advice and representation to low-wage workers on issues such as wage theft and workplace discrimination.

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About Catholic Migration Services: For over 50 years, Catholic Migration Services, a not-for-profit legal services provider affiliated with Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, has been providing quality legal services to low-income individuals in New York City in the areas of immigration, housing, and employment. For more information, please visit www.catholicmigration.org and connect with us on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram @CMSBQ.

 

PRESS MENTION: In Queens, Strangers Become Neighbors

Sam Ida stands with his daughter, Laila, in front of the building where their family has lived for more than a decade. Multiple rent increases over the last few years raised concerns for Mr. Ida and motivated him to help start a tenant association. (Photo: Tom Sibley for The New York Times)

Rent increases in a building in Sunnyside encouraged tenants to band together. Now they know one another’s names and help keep an eye on building management.

November 6, 2023
By D.W. Gibson

It wasn’t a dramatic rent increase. “Just $35.01,” said Sam Ida, who received a letter informing him of the change.

The notice went to everyone in his building in Queens because the increase was spurred by what’s known as a major capital improvement, or M.C.I. If a landlord makes an improvement to a building that benefits all tenants, some of those costs can be passed on to the tenants through a rent increase, which can remain in effect for up to 30 years. In the case of Mr. Ida’s building, the elevator had been renovated.

He didn’t fear paying the extra $35.01 each month — he and his wife, Aimee Nazario Ida, both work and could cover the increase. What he found unnerving was the hunch that this might not be his last M.C.I. notification.

It wasn’t.

The first had come just months before the pandemic, the second arrived after the rental market recovered. This time it was an increase of $39.12 to cover work on the building’s facade.

Mr. Ida’s family had moved into the rent-stabilized apartment 11 years earlier. His daughter, Laila, was only 2 and his son, Voltron, wasn’t yet born. But he and Ms. Ida, whom he met when they were students at the Pratt Institute, were already thinking long-term. They liked that there was an elementary school across the street, parks nearby and tree-lined sidewalks all around. “It’s a nice area for families,” Mr. Ida recalled thinking.

The neighborhood felt perfect, even if the 55-unit, brick building didn’t. “It’s old, prewar,” he said, “and not that great of a building.”

There was the time water came pouring through the ceiling. When Mr. Ida ran upstairs to knock on the door of the apartment above his, he discovered that his neighbor also had water coming through the ceiling. Together they ran up to the next floor and helped yet another neighbor locate a bathtub leak. “But we never considered these kinds of things a big deal,” he said. “We just took everything in stride.”

While Mr. Ida said the building’s super would address major issues like water cascading through multiple units, smaller things festered — cockroaches and mice, missing window guards and peeling paint. Mr. Ida, who grew up the son of a carpenter, said, “To be honest, when something’s fairly minor, I just fix it myself.”

Mr. Ida learned to looked past the challenges of the building because of the neighborhood — and the spaciousness of his family’s two-bedroom. “In New York,” he said, “it’s the biggest place I’ve ever lived.”

The apartment has provided plenty of room for his two children to grow over the years. They’re 9 and 13 now and the apartment is, with all its imperfections, the family’s home — affordable and suited to their priorities.

Occupation: Children’s book illustrator, teacher and sign maker

On making books: Mr. Ida has designed over 35 children’s books, specializing in pop-up books. “It’s a really small world,” he said. “There were only 30 or so of us when I started.” Today, he says, more artists are learning pop-up techniques. “They make single issues or very small runs of pop-up artist books, rather than publishing for the mass market.”

On hearing from readers: “Occasionally, I still get heartfelt letters or messages from people who bought my books a long time ago or found them at a thrift store,” Mr. Ida said. “There is a lot I love about making pop-up books. As an art form, it holds a great deal of untapped potential. The books can connect on a deep level with some people.”

When the multiple M.C.I. increases came along, it rattled Mr. Ida. If the increases continued, he thought, they could accumulate beyond his family’s budget, forcing a move — not just from the apartment but from their routines, schools, and beloved Sunnyside.

After the second notification arrived, he heard others start to grumble. “Every time I walked out the door,” he said, “I’d walk into a conversation about this. I think if it was just me, I wouldn’t have done anything about it, but because everyone was mobilized, we had to do something to disincentivize them from doing this perpetually.”

In March, Mr. Ida saw a flier at his local library: Catholic Migration Services, which provides legal services to immigrants, was holding a workshop focused on how to form a tenants’ association. “I told the guys who are always complaining in front of the building that we should go to the class and try to start an association,” he said. “At that workshop we really got organized and decided on a course of action, believing that we had a pretty good chance to — if not get the second increase canceled — at least get it reduced.”

Mr. Ida distributed fliers throughout the building for a first meeting. At the workshop he learned that getting a third of all tenants to attend would be a success. “For that first meeting,” he recalled, “half the building showed up.”

The association was advised by its legal counsel to request a copy of the application that had been submitted by the building’s owner. When Mr. Ida and other members of the association reviewed the materials, they noticed that certain figures provided in the paperwork did not match figures in copies of receipts that were included. “The application seemed a little thrown together,” he said. “It seemed like they weren’t really expecting anyone to take a closer look at it.”

At the same time, Mr. Ida and his neighbors decided to stop living with all the needed repairs they had learned to ignore or fix themselves: broken light fixtures, warped floors, walls crumbling from previous water leaks. “We made a list of all the violations in the building and flooded 311 with complaints related to them,” he said. According to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the building has had 113 violations, 27 of which remain open.

With the first M.C.I. increase already implemented, the association petitioned for the second to be delayed and the request was granted. “We put the brakes on the increase and let them know we were appealing it,” Mr. Ida said. “In that process if you respond as an association, you have a much better chance of getting a better result than as an individual.”

While the association awaits an outcome regarding the second increase, Mr. Ida said the organizing has already had an effect. “Since we formed the association,” he said, “the management has been better about getting things fixed.” What’s more, the association has changed the culture of the building. “People I had only known in passing,” he said, “I finally got to know their names.”

Representatives at MCP Property Management, which manages the building, did not respond to multiple requests for a comment.

Despite the fact that so many people have lived in the building for so long, retiring there and living on a fixed income, it wasn’t until the association was formed that they started to get to know one another.

The tenants maintain an active chat group, they are aware of one another’s issues and they help their neighbors out — people store packages for each other so they aren’t stolen anymore, they keep spare keys for each other and help out with dog walks. A collection of people who shared a building have become, in the truest sense, neighbors.

“Overall, it’s made us more connected to each other. We’re working to improve the building and have a voice in that process. I feel like even if we lose on the second M.C.I., we have to push back or the people who own the building will just keep wanting more and more.”

Mr. Ida’s penchant for organizing has spilled into other areas of his life. He’s been teaching at New York University since 2014 but only recently got involved in the labor union. “After we formed the tenant association,” he said, “it inspired me to get more involved and I went to a union meeting for the first time. I’m not normally someone who would really get involved in these things, but it’s good to know you’re not alone in whatever your struggles are.”


Read the original article in The New York Times: In Queens, Strangers Become Neighbors

INTERNSHIP ANNOUNCEMENT: 2024 SUMMER LEGAL INTERNSHIP

 

 

 

 

 

INTERNSHIP ANNOUNCEMENT: 2024 SUMMER LEGAL INTERNSHIPS

 

Catholic Migration Services (“CMS”) is currently accepting 2024 summer legal internship applications for our Tenant Advocacy, Immigration, and Workers Rights’ Programs.  CMS is a nonprofit provider of legal services primarily serving low-income residents of Brooklyn and Queens and is an affiliated agency of Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens.

Interns will be responsible for legal research, drafting legal memoranda and other documents, factual investigation, assisting in hearing/trial preparation, development of educational and outreach materials, client interviewing, and a host of other needs that arise in CMS litigation and advocacy efforts. Interns also may have opportunities to observe CMS attorneys in court or administrative agency proceedings.

The Tenant Advocacy Program (“TAP”) at CMS assists tenants – primarily residents of Queens – with a wide array of housing-related legal services ranging from brief advice to full representation in court proceedings. TAP assists tenants with matters such as eviction defense, obtaining needed repairs, combatting landlord harassment and rent overcharges, obtaining renewal leases, and obtaining rent increase exemptions for seniors and persons with disabilities. We typically litigate cases in Queens Housing Court and at administrative agencies, and also periodically represent clients in Queens Supreme Court and the Second Department. Because TAP also has tenant organizers, our legal team and organizers collaborate to lead community education events and bring group cases.

The Immigration Program at CMS is comprised of three units: Removal Defense, Affirmative Filings, and Naturalization. Removal Defense represents immigrants who are before Immigration Court seeking forms of relief such as defensive asylum, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, cancellation of removal for lawful permanent residents and non-lawful permanent residents, motions to reopen, and 212(C) waivers. The Removal Defense team also files affirmative asylum petitions, U visas, T visas and I-130 family based petitions associated with a removal case before United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”). The affirmative filings team files R visas, religious worker petitions, consular processing family petitions, Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) petitions, I-130 family petitions, inadmissibility waivers, I-90 green card renewals, and adjustment of status applications. The Naturalization team submits naturalization applications and N-600 (application for certificate of citizenship for people who derived or acquired US citizenship through their parents) applications before USCIS.  We are seeking summer interns to assist with our removal defense and affirmative work.

The Workers’ Rights Program at CMS works towards strengthening the enforcement of workers’ rights through affirmative litigation, policy reform, individual representation, and community education. In collaboration with workers’ centers and community-based organizations citywide, the Workers’ Rights Program provides advice and representation to hundreds of low-income and immigrant workers each year facing a range of problems, including wage theft, entitlement to paid and unpaid leave (family leave, sick leave, etc…), discrimination, unemployment insurance, and other basic workplace rights.  The Workers’ Rights Program represents clients at various city, state and federal enforcement agencies, as well as in state and federal courts.

General Information

Applicants should be currently enrolled in an ABA accredited law school.  The internship is unpaid, however CMS will support the applicant’s effort to obtain funding from outside sources (e.g., their law school, Equal Justice America, etc.).

Application Instructions

Interested applicants should email a cover letter, resume, and writing sample directly to the program to which they are applying: For Immigration Internships (Please direct your application materials to the intended unit):

Lynn Neugebauer
Supervising Attorney, Removal Defense Project
Email: lneugebauer@catholicmigration.org

Christopher Holtz
Supervising Attorney, Affirmative Filings Unit
Email: choltz@catholicmigration.org

For Tenant Advocacy Internships:

Jonathan Cohen
Managing Attorney, Tenant Advocacy Program
Email: jcohen@catholicmigration.org

For Workers’ Rights Internships:

Alice Davis
Managing Attorney, Workers’ Rights Program
Email: adavis@catholicmigration.org


Download this Fellowship Opportunity as a pdf: 2024 Summer Legal Internship Posting

JOB ANNOUNCEMENT: PART TIME ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT

 

 

 

 

 

JOB ANNOUNCEMENT: PART TIME ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT

 

Catholic Migration Services (“CMS”), a nonprofit provider of legal services and affiliated agency of Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, is seeking a part-time Administrative Assistant for its Removal Defense Program (RDP) and Pro Se Plus Project (PSPP).  CMS provides free legal services to low-income immigrants in the areas of immigration, housing and employment law.  Our RDP team provides legal assistance and representation to non-detained individuals in removal proceedings.  PSPP is part of RDP and provides pro se assistance with certain applications to those who cannot find legal representation. More information about our organization and our work is available at www.catholicmigration.org.

The Administrative Assistant will support RDP and PSPP teams at both our Brooklyn and Queens offices and will be based in the Brooklyn office. The Administrative Assistant must be punctual, well-organized, and have the capacity to prioritize and manage multiple tasks.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

  • Provide support to RDP and PSPP teams, including assistance making appointments, copying/scanning documents, mailing, filing, communicating with clients, taking filings to immigration court, and monitoring PSPP’s online screening system;
  • Answer and manage phone calls and text messages from clients, prospective clients, and PSPP participants; make appointments, provide appropriate requested information to visitors, staff, clients and program participants;
  • Help coordinate logistics for on-site and off-site legal clinics and events; and
  • Data entry into our client database.

Qualifications

  • Intermediate computer skills; working knowledge of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint);
  • Fluency in Spanish;
  • Ability and experience working with clients from diverse backgrounds and communities;
  • Excellent communication and organizational skills; and
  • College Graduate preferred (minimum of High School diploma).

Diversity and Non-Discrimination Policy

CMS values workplace diversity and welcomes applicants and employees of all backgrounds. CMS strives to create a positive, supportive, and inclusive work environment for all staff.  CMS makes all employment decisions without regard to any applicant’s or employee’s protected characteristics, including their race, religion, color, national origin, immigration status, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, arrest or conviction record, or marital status.

Salary and Benefits

CMS offers a competitive salary and benefits package and generous leave policies.  Salary is based on a Union salary scale.  The salary range for individuals with one to three years of experience is $28,537 to $29,577 for a 20 hour work week.

Union Representation

This is a bargaining unit position represented for collective bargaining purposes by the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, UAW, Local 2325.

Application Instructions

This position is available immediately, and applications will be considered on a rolling basis.  To apply, email a cover letter and resume to Magdalena Barbosa, Legal Director at mbarbosa@catholicmigration.org.  Please include “Administrative Assistant Application” in the subject line.


Download this Fellowship Opportunity as a pdf: Part Time Administrative Assistant

PRESS MENTION: Inquilinos demandan a casero: por estar ocho meses sin gas y por acoso

Screenshot of news coverage from NY1 Noticias.

Screenshot of news coverage via NY1 Noticias.

September 15, 2023
By NY1 Noticias

Antonio Flores dice que por años ha padecido acoso de parte del casero donde vive.

Y al igual que él, otras 5 familias mexicanas que viven en el edificio ubicado en el 28-18 de la Avenida 38th, en Long Island City, Queens, han demandado ante la corte de vivienda al propietario del inmueble por haberlos dejado sin gas durante 8 meses.

Y también aseguran, porque los vigilan cada paso que dan.

“El problema es que tenemos mucho acoso por un hombre que contrató el dueño, nos acosaba mucho, nos investigaba, a qué hora salíamos de la casa, sacaba fotos”, dijo Antonio Flores, inquilino.

Poco antes de la audiencia ante el juez, todos ellos acompañados de activistas protestaron frente a la corte, en espera que sus voces y reclamos sea escuchados y fallen a su favor.

Martín Hernández, quien también es inquilino, ya le demandó hace 10 anos por agresión física y ganó. Sin embargo, el acoso no ha parado, asegura.

“Eso fue a parar hasta la corte obviamente y se le pusieron cargos al super, y desafortunadamente al dueño no se le pudieron poner cargos por el poder que tiene y hasta la fecha sigue acosándome, esto no termina”, dijo Hernández.

Antonia Martínez no se queda atrás, pues dice que también ha sido blanco de injurias y hasta de amenazas.

“El dueño y sus trabajadores nos han hecho discriminación, nos amenazan con que si no tenemos los documentos legales nos van a intimidar diciendo que inmigración anda cogiendo a la gente sin documentos”, dijo Antonia.“El dueño y sus trabajadores nos han hecho discriminación, nos amenazan con que si no tenemos los documentos legales nos van a intimidar diciendo que inmigración anda cogiendo a la gente sin documentos”, dijo Antonia.

Viven constantemente con miedo, dicen los inquilinos.

“Nuestros hijos también tienen miedo de sus trabajadores y del dueño porque no se sienten libre de vivir en el departamento, y es muy estresante”, agregó Antonia.

Como estresante es la permanente vigilancia…

“Instaló cámaras, de hecho nos mandó fotos que cuando salimos, cuando botamos basura, a la hora que llegamos del trabajo”, dijo Hernández.

La demanda también exige la reparación por los meses sin gas en sus apartamentos.

“Los inquilinos están pidiendo una reducción de renta de la cuenta que se debe ahora, por la huelga por no tener gras por 8 meses, y también una reducción en la renta del futuro para poder quedarse en su hogar”, dijo Amy Collado, de Servicios Católicos de Migración.

Enviamos un correo al propietario, pero hasta el cierre de este reportaje no obtuvimos respuesta.


See the original news coverage via NY1 Noticias (en español): Inquilinos demandan a casero: por estar ocho meses sin gas y por acoso

JOB ANNOUNCEMENT: PARALEGAL, PRO SE PLUS PROJECT

 

 

 

 

 

JOB ANNOUNCEMENT: PARALEGAL, PRO SE PLUS PROJECT

 

Catholic Migration Services (“CMS”), an affiliated agency of Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, provides high quality free legal services, community education, and advocacy for low- income immigrants residing in Brooklyn and Queens, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, or immigration status. CMS assists individuals with their immigration, housing, and employment legal needs. CMS is committed to “welcoming the stranger in our midst” by serving and working alongside underserved immigrant communities to advance equality and social justice in an ever-changing landscape.

The Paralegal will work in the Brooklyn office with our new Pro Se Plus Project (PSPP), a collaborative initiative of several non-profit legal service providers and community organizations that was developed to respond to the needs of newly arrived migrants from the southern border. PSPP provides support to immigrants representing themselves in immigration cases by providing community legal orientations, trainings for advocates, legal screenings, and pro se assistance with various immigration applications, both on a rolling basis and through scalable clinics and workshops. This is a unique opportunity for someone passionate about immigrant rights, energized to empower immigrant communities, and eager to participate in the development of an innovative project.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

  • Assist in planning, developing and coordinating community legal orientations, volunteer trainings, and clinics;
  • Conduct screenings, intake, and information collection regarding eligibility for immigration benefits;
  • Prepare a variety of immigration applications and motions, on a pro se basis, including changes of address, motions to change venue, applications for asylum and work permits; file such motions and applications with the immigration court, ICE and USCIS;
  • Participate in on-site and virtual PSPP events, which may take place on evenings and weekends, such as legal clinics, educational events, or workshops held throughout the five boroughs;
  • Assist with Spanish/English or Haitian Creole/English translation of documents and oral interpretation;
  • Assist in training, onboarding, tracking and maintaining communication with PSPP volunteers;
  • Maintain physical and electronic files for program participants; monitor the PSPP electronic interest form and PSPP waitlist; assist with internal and external reporting; and
  • Provide additional support as needed.

Qualifications:

  • Required
    • Bachelor’s or Associate’s degree;
    • Fluency in written and oral Spanish or Haitian Creole; .
    • Experience working with immigrant communities of color, including those who have experienced trauma;
    • Demonstrated ability to take initiative and work independently or as part of a team;
    • Strong, clear, and effective communication skills;
    • Excellent organizational and time management skills;
    • Meticulous attention to detail;
    • Excellent computer skills;
    • Availability to travel throughout the five boroughs.
  • Preferred, but not required:
    • Prior or related immigration experience;
    • Demonstrated interest in public interest work and social justice for underserved populations.

Diversity and Non-Discrimination Policy:

Catholic Migration Services values workplace diversity and welcomes applicants and employees of all backgrounds. CMS strives to create a positive, supportive, and inclusive work environment for all staff. CMS makes all employment decisions without regard to any applicant’s or employee’s protected characteristics, including their race, religion, color, national origin, immigration status, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, arrest conviction record, or marital status.

Salary and Benefits:

Salary is on a union scale based on years of experience. The salary range for an immigration paralegal with one to six years of experience is $49,939.20 to $56.181.60. CMS offers a competitive benefits package that includes medical, dental and vision insurance coverage, transit benefits, Flexible Spending Account (FSA) and a 403(b) retirement plan including employer contribution. We offer generous leave policies, including four weeks paid vacation, four paid personal days, fourteen paid holidays and the week off between Christmas and New Year’s Days, inclusive.

Union Representation:

This is a bargaining unit position represented for collective bargaining purposes by the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, UAW, Local 2325.

 Application Instructions:

Applications will be accepted immediately and will be considered on a rolling basis. Interested applicants should send a cover letter, resume, list of two professional references and a writing sample to: Raluca Oncioiu, Managing Attorney at roncioiu@catholicmigration.org. Please include “PSPP Paralegal” in the subject line.


Download this Fellowship Opportunity as a pdf: Paralegal, Pro Se Plus Project

PRESS MENTION: Zara Realty ordered to stop collecting excess fees from renters

Zara Realty ordered to stop collecting excess fees from renters

August 18, 2023
By CBS NEW YORK

NEW YORK — We have an update on a Queens landlord accused of tenant abuse.

It’s a story we first told you about on July 31.

Now, Zara Realty has been ordered to stop collecting excess fees from renters.

A judge granted the motion by the state attorney general.

Tenants in rent-stabilized units in Flushing say Zara Realty harassed and tricked them into paying predatory fees.

PRESS MENTION: New York Workers Are Waiting on $79 Million in Back Wages

New York Workers Are Waiting on $79 Million in Back Wages

(Courtesy of ProPublica)

 

The New York State Department of Labor still needs to recover 63% of stolen wages during a five-year period analyzed by ProPublica and Documented. The problem? An understaffed agency with poor tools for recovering wages and enforcing judgments.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with DocumentedSign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Saprina James was hopeful when she received a letter in 2019 about her wage theft claim against her former employer. The letter said the New York State Department of Labor had substantiated her claim and ordered Mugisha F. Sahini and his company, Riverside Line, to pay her more than $70,000 in back wages. “I was feeling good that the government was on my side, and that I would soon get paid,” she said.

James first started driving a van for Sahini in January 2016, taking people to medical appointments in Buffalo, New York. She often worked six days a week, usually helping dialysis patients who relied on walkers, and drove clients from 4:30 a.m. until 10 p.m. She didn’t mind the long hours — she assumed that her pay would ultimately reflect her hard work.

“It was very hard for me,” said James, who had a difficult time paying her rent and groceries, as well as taxes owed on her income as an independent contractor.

In late 2017, James quit and filed a wage theft claim with the Department of Labor, accusing Sahini and Riverside Line of violating the minimum wage law. She was later joined by her former co-workers, who also claimed minimum wage violations.

The agency substantiated the workers’ claims two years later, ordering Sahini to pay nearly $425,000 in back wages and $850,000 in penalties.

But the Department of Labor, which is responsible for both investigating wage theft claims and recovering back wages, has not been able to collect even a penny on behalf of James. Sahini flatly refused to pay for more than a year, James said, and then appealed the case, claiming that he wasn’t aware that the workers were earning less than minimum wage. The appeal has since been rejected, but James has yet to receive any payment.

About to turn 60, James said she’s now unemployed and running through her savings to pay her bills. “I’m so upset,” she said. “This is ridiculous. I don’t understand why it takes so long.”

Sahini did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

What happened to James is strikingly common among victims of wage theft in New York state, an investigation by Documented and ProPublica found. She and her former co-workers are among thousands of wage theft victims whose employers were ordered by the Department of Labor to pay, but for whom the agency failed to fully recover back wages, according to an analysis of the agency’s database of wage theft violations from 2017 through 2021.

In all, during the five-year period, the agency determined that at least $126 million in wages had been stolen from workers, the analysis shows. As of Feb. 21, however, the agency still needed to recover about $79 million of that total — or about 63% of the back wages.

Of the outstanding back wages, the agency hadn’t recovered at least $7.8 million because of “uncollectible” circumstances, such as businesses going bankrupt or investigators being unable to track down employers, the analysis shows.

The rest, about $71 million, was labeled by the agency as “pending payment,” which means either that no payments or only partial payments had been made, or that the cases were being appealed.

Of the thousands of businesses in the database, at least 95 with outstanding back wages were repeat offenders, each failing to fully pay in at least two cases during the five-year period, the analysis shows.

A case in point: The agency began investigating Brooklyn-based Reymond Construction in 2018 and opened three additional cases in 2019 based on claims filed by 12 workers. It eventually ordered the company to pay more than $31,950 in back wages, but as of Feb. 21 the payments were still pending. The owner of Reymond Construction did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Labor experts said it’s hard to compare New York’s wage recovery effort against those of other states because of the paucity of wage theft data. State labor enforcement agencies across the country either do not make such information publicly available or do not maintain it in a standardized format that allows for state-by-state comparisons.

National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, a worker-rights organization, is so frustrated with the Department of Labor’s wage recovery rate that it has mostly stopped sending workers to the agency. “It’s a waste of time,” said JoAnn Lum, the group’s director. “I’ve seen so many workers file claims, and they’re told that they’re owed so much in back wages — and then nothing happens.”

Advocates and labor lawyers, as well as eight former Department of Labor officials interviewed by Documented and ProPublica, said it’s critical for the agency to improve its wage recovery rate. But they said the agency has a number of problems that prevent that from happening: Its enforcement unit is chronically understaffed; it lacks a collections unit tasked with wage recovery; and its investigators, unlike their counterparts in other states, do not have legal authority to take actions against recalcitrant employers.

The former agency officials, some of whom had spent decades working at the Department of Labor, said these challenges often leave investigators incapable of enforcing the law against unscrupulous employers. One official — who still works in state government and did not want his name used out of fear of retaliation — put it this way: “If an employer said, ‘Fuck you,’” in response to a payment demand, “there’s not much the agency can do.”

The Department of Labor, which released wage theft data after Documented sued the agency over its refusal to do so, “works diligently to protect the paychecks of hard-working New Yorkers,” Aaron Cagwin, an agency spokesperson, said in a statement.

Cagwin said the agency is also “consistently making improvements to its wage theft investigations and wage recovery processes,” including improving how wage theft claims can be filed and expanding law enforcement partnerships.

Advocates said workers are the ones who suffer the consequences of the agency’s poor wage recovery rate: They are often forced to move on to other jobs, rely on their family for support, go on public assistance, or relocate to another state or, in the case of immigrants, back to their country of origin.

“Wage theft impacts the lowest-wage workers who need that money to pay the rent, buy groceries, take care of their families,” said Magdalena Barbosa, senior vice president at Catholic Migration Services. She noted that New York has strong labor laws that don’t “trickle down into enforcement — and you have workers waiting sometimes for many years to get a small piece of what they’re owed in back wages.”

Vincent Cao, an organizer with the Chinese Staff & Workers Association, said “it’s the cruelest slap in the face to award them back wages that take so long to arrive.”

On a bitterly cold morning in December, a former senior investigator with the Department of Labor was sitting in a coffee shop in Brooklyn, reflecting on his years at the agency. Bald and bespectacled, he raised his eyebrows and described a Sisyphean environment in which overworked investigators faced scarce resources, bureaucratic obstacles and unscrupulous employers and their lawyers while trying in vain to reduce a backlog of thousands of wage theft cases. “It feels hopeless sometimes,” he said, “but more than hopeless — it makes me angry.”

The former investigator’s assessment was echoed by the seven other agency officials interviewed by Documented and ProPublica. They all expressed their frustration with the agency’s chronic failure to fulfill one of its core mandates: to protect the state’s 10 million workers from wage theft.

The former investigator, who still works in state government and did not want his name used out of fear of retaliation, blamed New York’s political leaders for not prioritizing the agency’s mission and perpetually underfunding it.

Budget figures for the agency’s enforcement arm, the Division of Labor Standards — which the former investigator joined more than a decade ago — are available from 2008 to 2022, and they show that its budget went up by 17.8% from $28 million to $33 million during that period. Just to keep up with the inflation rate, the budget would have had to increase by an additional $5 million.

Some state lawmakers said the agency’s woes were particularly pronounced during the tenure of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran New York from 2011 to 2021. On the one hand, Cuomo launched two joint task forces made up of multiple agencies to crack down on industries, such as car washes and construction, where wage theft is prevalent. But he also instituted a spending cap that kept most state agencies from increasing their budget by more than 2% each year.

With the tight budget, the Division of Labor Standards reduced the number of employees from 282 in 2008 to 140 in 2017, while the number of open investigations climbed from 6,923 in January 2008 to 15,824 in January 2017, according to agency documents obtained by Make the Road New York, an immigrant-rights organization, and shared with Documented and ProPublica. The vast majority of the division’s employees are investigators, while administrative and support staff make up the rest.

Carmine Ruberto, who ran the Division of Labor Standards from 2007 to 2015, recalled the impact of the tight budget on staff morale and workload. “Do I think we could have done better under Cuomo if we had gotten more people? Sure,” he said.

Richard Azzopardi, a spokesperson for the former governor, said wage theft was “a huge priority” for Cuomo, but his administration’s hands were tied with limited resources.

“In 10 of the 11 years during his administration, we had structural deficits and we came in at the heels of the Great Recession where giant cuts had already been made. And we had to restructure government in order to make things right,” Azzopardi said. “I do understand that some people have different opinions on what the money should have been spent on. But it’s a balance.”

Under Gov. Kathy Hochul, the Division of Labor Standards saw its budget increase by $7 million, or 19.5%, in 2023, but the number of full-time employees now stands at 129 and has increased only by three since the governor took office in 2021.

Justin Henry, deputy communications director for Hochul, declined to comment.

The former investigator said the tight budget also meant that the agency couldn’t form a collections unit fully staffed with those versed in financial fraud investigation, asset tracking and locating employers, which could then be deployed for wage recovery — a task that Terri Gerstein, the agency’s former deputy commissioner, called “a crucial part of the process.”

Instead, the agency has been relying on senior investigators to handle the task, which adds to their workload and sometimes requires them to do tasks they’re not trained for, such as overseeing the payment plans of some employers, several former agency officials said.

The agency needs “a proper collections unit,” Gerstein said.

In addition to the lack of the collections unit, the former agency officials said the process is slowed down because each case has to be reviewed by several layers of officials.

For instance, once a claim is substantiated, the case goes to a senior investigator, who can sometimes take up to a year and a half to review it. Similarly, when an employer is unresponsive, the Division of Labor Standards issues an order to comply, but only after getting approvals from three more layers of officials.

The former investigator said the bureaucratic bottleneck helped create long delays in recovering back wages. “It’s not like we push a button and increase the speed of the machine and then the cases come out at the other end,” he said.

The analysis of the agency’s database appears to back up the former investigator’s claim. As of Feb. 21, the agency had recovered no wages in 8,300 cases — affecting about 29,000 workers — that were at least five years old, or more than a fifth of the total cases from that time period.

Two of the long-pending cases were filed by Fernando, a 49-year-old Mexican immigrant who worked as a delivery driver for two Brooklyn restaurants. He filed his claim against the first restaurant in 2009 and another claim with his co-worker against the second restaurant in 2015.

The agency substantiated the claims, finding that two restaurants owed Fernando and his co-worker a total of more than $380,000 in back wages. Fernando, who requested to be identified by only his middle name because he’s undocumented, said he has not received his back wages. “The most important thing is the DOL could resolve these cases quicker,” he said.

The former agency officials said that when investigators try to go after employers for back wages, they find themselves without effective enforcement tools to force quick payments.

The orders to comply, for instance, can be appealed at the state’s Industrial Board of Appeals, a five-person panel that can take months, or even years, to adjudicate a case. In the vast majority of the cases, the board eventually sides with the agency. But even then, former agency officials said, employers often continue to ignore the orders, knowing that they are unlikely to face any consequences from doing so.

The former agency officials also said filing judgments in court against particularly recalcitrant employers often fails to force quick payments: While it puts a mark on their credit report, employers can and do get around the judgment by conducting their businesses in someone else’s name or getting a private loan from their family and friends.

Advocates and labor lawyers agreed that this was common practice. “Just because you get a judgment doesn’t mean you can collect on it,” said Margaret McIntyre, a lawyer who represents wage theft victims.

Advocates and labor lawyers said New York could adopt a number of tactics that have been successfully deployed in other states.

In Maryland and Wisconsin, for instance, workers are allowed to place a lien on their employers’ personal property to secure the payment of back wages. This has proven to be effective, according to a 2015 report by the Legal Aid Society, Urban Justice Center and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice. “A wage lien not only encourages an employer to dispute the matter and play fair in court, but ensures that if the workers win their case, they may actually be able to enforce a judgment against the employers’ property and collect the wages they are owed,” the report said.

New York, in fact, has had a lien law for decades, but it only applies to certain workers in the construction industry. Industry pressure, especially from the powerful New York City Hospitality Alliance, which represents restaurant owners, has helped defeat legislation introduced in recent years to expand the law’s scope.

In June, after the latest lien bill stumbled in Albany, the Hospitality Alliance issued a statement, saying it would have been a violation of due process to allow an employee to place a lien on “the private property of the owners, investors and even managers of the business based solely on the accusation of wage violations.”

In California, businesses appealing the finding of wage theft violations are required to post a surety bond up to $150,000, which they forfeit if they fail to pay back wages after losing on appeal. Those who fail to post the bond can be and are prohibited from doing business in the state.

In New York, the state has a similar bonding rule, which was implemented in the wake of a 2015 New York Times exposé on working conditions in nail salons, but it only applies to owners of nail salons with at least two workers. New York City also has a limited bonding rule that applies to owners of car wash businesses. Advocates for nail salon and car wash workers said they didn’t have enough data to know whether the bonding rules have significantly helped reduce wage theft.

Some states and local communities have also used the licensing and contracting processes to their advantage.

In 2015, for instance, Cook County in Illinois took aim at violators of state and federal wage laws, disqualifying them from lucrative county contracts. In 2019, Santa Clara County in California also launched a pilot project that would suspend the licenses of any business for five days if it fails to pay back wages. Before the year’s end, the county suspended eight licenses, mostly from restaurants, and each led to the payment, according to the county’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement. “Being closed for five days is really bad for a restaurant’s business, so they seek to avoid that,” Gerstein said.

Adopting these approaches “wouldn’t make wage theft disappear in New York, but it would make a difference,” said Rick Blum, staff lawyer at the Legal Aid Society.

Some workers have already lost faith in the Department of Labor — and this includes a young woman named Kirsten, who filed a wage theft claim with the agency in August 2020 against a downtown Manhattan bar that had repeatedly failed to pay her. Kirsten, who requested to be identified by only her middle name to protect her future employment prospects, said she submitted documents and pay stubs. She didn’t hear back for more than a year and a half, until a phone call and letter from an investigator in the spring of 2022 asking her for more information about the case.

To this day, Kirsten said she has not received her back wages and has given up altogether. The agency “has been useless to me,” she said. “It just feels hopeless, like workers are all alone.”

About the Data

Determining the prevalence of wage theft in New York is more complicated than in some other states, including California, Massachusetts and Texas, because its Department of Labor does not make the results of investigations readily available to the public.

Documented filed a public records request for that information in 2019. When the department refused to release it, Documented took the agency to court. The agency has since released to Documented and ProPublica its database containing information on nearly 97,000 cases that began and concluded from 2005 to Feb. 21, 2023. Department of Labor officials told us that they began using this database fully in 2008, so we only analyzed cases from that year onward.

The database provides a number of details on each case, including the names and addresses of businesses that committed the violation, the number of workers who were affected and cited labor law violations.

But the database only provides the dates of when cases began, so we focused most of our analysis on cases from 2017 to 2021.

To determine how many businesses had multiple wage theft cases and still owed back wages, we manually standardized business names and addresses and counted instances in which a company still owed back wages in at least two cases.

To determine the percentage of back wages recovered, we tallied the amount of collected back wages and divided it by the amount of outstanding back wages in all cases contained in the database. Our metric may overestimate the percentage of back wages recovered. In some cases, the recovered amount recorded in the database might also include “liquidated damages,” which are payments for the harm caused by the wage theft and interest. The database does not differentiate between these different types of collected funds. In cases where the recovered amount was greater than the outstanding back wages, we adjusted the recovered amount to equal the outstanding back wages.

The analysis does not take into account the cases reported to the U.S. Department of Labor, which also investigates wage theft in New York but does not make public any database showing how much back wages have been recovered by the agency.


Read the original story in ProPublica: New York Workers Are Waiting on $79 Million in Back Wages

Fellowship Opportunity for Fall 2024

 

 

 

 

FELLOWSHIP OPPORTUNITY: FALL 2024

Catholic Migration Services, a nonprofit provider of free legal services, and an affiliated agency of Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, is seeking a candidate to sponsor for a post-graduate legal fellowship in our tenant advocacy or immigration programs starting in the fall of 2024 (applications to fellowship foundations due fall 2023).   Fellowship programs include the Skadden Fellowship Foundation and similar programs.

Qualifications:

  • Applicants should be rising third-year law students, recent law graduates with judicial clerkships beginning in the fall of 2024, or current judicial law clerks;
  • Admission to the New York Bar, or taking the New York Bar Exam not later than July 2024;
  • Proficiency in a second language is strongly preferred, including but not limited to Spanish, Kreyol, French, Mandarin, Cantonese or Arabic;
  • A demonstrated interest in public service, including but not limited to serving low-income immigrants or tenants is strongly preferred; and
  • Strong oral advocacy skills, as well as analytical and writing skills.

Application Process:

Please send a cover letter, resume, law school transcript and list of three references by email to Magdalena Barbosa, Legal Director, at mbarbosa@catholicmigration.org.  Inclusion of a fellowship project proposal (i.e., what work within the tenant advocacy or immigration arena you propose to do) is recommended, but not required.  Applications will be considered on a rolling basis through September 1, 2023.

Additional Information:

Catholic Migration Services values workplace diversity and welcomes applicants of all backgrounds. Catholic Migration Services makes all employment decisions without regard to any applicant’s or employee’s protected characteristics, including their race, religion, color, national origin, immigration status, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, arrest conviction record, or marital status. Catholic Migration Services is unionized under the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, UAW, Local 2325.


Download this Fellowship Opportunity as a pdf: Fellowship Opportunity for Fall 2024

PRESS MENTION: Queens residents in rent-stabilized buildings take aim at Zara Realty, claim tenant abuse

Queens residents in rent-stabilized buildings take aim at Zara Realty, claim tenant abuse

July 31, 2023
By Elle McLogan

(Courtesy of CBS New York)

NEW YORK — Zhao Yu Zhen lives in an apartment on Ash Avenue in Queens, but it’s hard for her to get in the building.

“Every time, I can’t get in,” she said in Chinese. “There’s no key.”

Since Zara Realty took over their building in Flushing, she and her neighbors say they’re asked to produce birth certificates, marriage licenses, even high fees for access to their own homes. In some cases, a family of five is given only one key to the entrance.

Residents from some of Zara’s nearly 40 rent-stabilized buildings across the borough, with support from attorneys and elected officials, are protesting what they call tenant abuse.

“I can’t find anyone who can help me,” said Zara tenant Moream Pervin, who lives in Jamaica.

She said she received notice her rent could go up by hundreds of dollars per month. She and the majority immigrant and low-income tenants believe it’s part of an effort to force them out.

They say Zara is skirting rent stabilization through the use of MCIs, or major capital improvements, which are building upgrades tenants say they don’t want, like masonry and waterproofing.

Meanwhile, they claim, the real issues go unaddressed, like mold, pests, inconsistent heating, and accessibility failures.

Zhao Yu Zhen said she has told her building’s superintendent about her broken stove and plumbing problems, but that he claims he can’t help her.

Zara Realty has been under scrutiny for years. State Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit in 2019 against the corporation for unscrupulous practices, which is pending.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Zara Realty told CBS New York, in part, “The company provides quality, compliant, affordable housing and refutes the baseless accusations” and “City public records show that the company is in compliance with ADA accessibility guidelines as well as heating and hot water requirements.”

Zara describes the withholding of keys as a safety measure to prevent illegal subletting. The spokesperson went on to say that MCIs are essential for upkeep and are okayed by the state.

The New York Division of Housing and Community Renewal, the department responsible for approving MCIs, declined to comment on Zara Realty due to open litigation, but said that each MCI is carefully reviewed.

Tenants claim that when the landlord caught wind of their planned rally on the steps of a Zara building in Flushing on Thursday, their meeting spot was suddenly closed off for a paint job.

“That was just to block us from not using the steps to organize,” renter Maria Jenny Lopez said.

When Douglas Ostling’s son needed daily therapy appointments for his multiple sclerosis, the building denied the family access to ramps, Ostling claims.

“You can’t bring someone in a wheelchair down stairs,” he said.

Ostling says he stopped asking for a ramp when his son died four months ago.