Workers’ Rights Law Center Blog

On Friday, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a 23-page opinion certifying Iglesias-Mendoza v. La Belle Farm, Inc. as a class action.  The opinion can be downloaded from http://www.workersrightsny.org/images/IglesiasClass1.pdf

The lawsuit alleges that the Defendants’ employees toiled as many as 12 hours per day, 7 days per week under abysmal conditions, but the Defendants never paid overtime wages and often did not pay the minimum wage.  The Defendants also allegedly housed workers in severely dilapidated labor camps and did not comply with federal agricultural worker protections.  The Defendants produce foie gras and other poultry products at their operations in Sullivan County, New York.

Organized by the New York Immigration Coalition.    Some of us from the WRLC will be participating.   Please come along.

For more information, see http://www.thenyic.org/content.asp?cid=560#560

From the New York Immigration Coalition website:

Join us as we call on the Governor and the State Legislature for action on critical immigrant community issues:

· Increase adult English language classes;
· Expand citizenship and immigrant legal services;
· Improve public education for immigrant and English language learner youth;
· Improve and ensure immigrant access to healthcare;
· Ensure equal access to drivers’ licenses for all immigrants;
· Strengthen immigrant worker rights;
· Increase quality, affordable housing for immigrants.

Proposed Schedule:
Continental Breakfast and Registration
March and Rally
Speeches by Elected Officials and Immigrant Community Leaders
Legislative Visits with State Government Officials (NYIC will coordinate all meeting requests)
and/or
Tour of State Capitol

This is from the AFSC website:

Vote for a clean minimum wage increase now!

That’s what every Senator should hear from his/her constituents.

A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it.

On Wednesday, the Senate will vote on whether to end debate and bring up a simple, straightforward vote on raising the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour by 2009. It will take 60 votes to end debate. That’s a tall order - but if thousands of constituents call, the Senate might do just what the House did with a strong bipartisan vote - support increasing the minimum wage without larding up with bill with billions on tax breaks, eroding labor standards, and/or bad ideas like the line item veto.

Call both your Senators now!

Step 1: Call 1-800-459-1887, toll-free, to be connected to the U.S. Capitol Switchboard.

Step 2: Ask to be connected to your Senator’s office. (If you’re not sure of his or her name, click here: http://www.senate.gov/and find your Senators by state at the upper right.)

Step 3: Tell the staffer who answers the phone:

Hi, my name is _______________ and I’m a constituent. Please tell Senator. _______ to vote for H.R. 2, the bill to increase the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years, by voting to end debate. Please pass a clean bill, with no tax breaks for business, no changes that hurt worker rights, and no bad ideas like the line item veto. Will Senator ___ vote in favor of H.R. 2 now by ending debate?

Then please follow steps 1-3 to call your other Senator.

The American Friends Service Committee (www.afsc.org/economic-justice/), the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign (www.letjusticeroll.org), and the Coalition on Human Needs (www.chn.org) urge all in their networks to call Congress and to forward this alert. The toll-free number is provided by AFSC, a Quaker organization which welcomes groups to use the number to support work for fair wages and a moral budget and without linking it to language or web sites supporting partisan purposes.

Why your call is needed: Senators are under lots of pressure to add costly, unnecessary, and/or downright dangerous provisions to the minimum wage. In some cases, calls from constituents may be enough to dissuade Senators from voting for bad amendments. And if your Senator(s) are strong votes for a clean minimum wage, they need to hear that the people of their state support them.

We know how busy you are - but standing up for struggling working people is worth your time.

Thanks!
See www.letjusticeroll.org to learn why 1,000 faith leaders support raising the minimum wage. And read a statement of support from hundreds of business owners at www.businessforafairminimumwage.org.

Check out this announcement re Feb. 3 forum re immigrant access to drivers’ licenses: Forumesp.doc
Also, there were couple articles recently regarding Governor Spitzer’s position on this issue:

Spitzer poised to ease access to drivers’ licenses. (New York Sun)

Acalorado debate sobre licencias para indocumentados (El Diario/La Prensa)

The National Employment Law Project has produced an excellent report responding to some truly nasty state efforts to regulate immigration.  Click the following link to view the report:

MORE HARM THAN GOOD: RESPONDING TO STATES’ MISGUIDED EFFORTS TO REGULATE IMMIGRATION 

You should contact NELP if you learn of other similar proposals that are not discussed in the report.

This article about the 1/1/07 increase in the NY minimum wage to 7.15 per hour mentions the Workers’ Rights Law Center:

Desinformación ante subida de salario

The CASA of Maryland report entitled WAGE THEFT:How Maryland Fails to Protect the Rights of Low-Wage Workers, which Kate discussed in her earlier blog posting, can be viewed at the following link:  http://www.casademaryland.org/press/wagetheft.pdf

Kudos to CASA of Maryland for their terrific work on the report.

We get calls every day from immigrant workers with a wide range of problems from wage theft to discrimination. Still, there seems to be one near-constant: no overtime.

Federal and state law require that most workers receive one-and-one-half hours of pay at the regular rate for every hour worked after 40 hours in a workweek. In the low-wage work world, some farmworkers (generally, field/orchard workers) and some domestic workers (those not employed by agencies) are exempt from the overtime laws. Still, with these very limited exceptions, nearly every worker who calls us — for example, construction workers, hotel workers, restaurant and other food service workers, landscapers, factory/manufacturing workers, warehouse workers — should be paid overtime wages.

Sadly, most are not. Noncompliance with overtime laws in the immigrant workforce is so rampant that we are surprised when we hear that a worker actually was paid overtime. Similarly, almost every lawsuit we have filed has included a claim for unpaid overtime (we’ve recovered well over 1/2 million dollars in unpaid overtime for immigrant workers since we opened our doors in mid-2004).

Some employers simply pay workers “straight time” for overtime hours and this is reflected on their workers’ check stubs. Others are more creative, paying workers entirely in cash, paying workers in cash for overtime hours, requiring workers to switch names when their hours approach 40, docking hours from workers’ pay, misclassifying workers as independent contractors…

…and one other trick that does not work:  an employee cannot waive her right to overtime or to bring a lawsuit for unpaid overtime, even if the waiver is entirely “voluntary”.  A resolution of a claim for unpaid overtime is only binding on the worker if it is part of a court-supervised or DOL-supervised settlement, and there are even some exceptions to this.
It almost seems like employers think immigrant aren’t supposed to get paid overtime.

Fortunately, our labor laws protect immigrants and non-immigrants alike. Similarly, undocumented immigrants have to same right to bring suit for overtime and other labor law violations as other workers. Federal courts in New York have, without exception, found that immigration status is not relevant to labor law claims. For this reason, immigration status does not surface in our cases.

So, employers should take notice: pay overtime. There is no immigrant exemption from overtime laws. Immigrant workers are contacting us and we are representing them in overtime lawsuits. Stop breaking the law.

CASA of Maryland has published a report this week (attached below) that calls on the state Department of Labor to step up its enforcement of Maryland’s wage and hour laws. The report draws on many of the ideas outlined in New York’s Campaign to End Wage Theft report. Check it out.

Hey, resident geek Dan, how do I attach a document?

–Kate

Had a meeting last night with Jen and Jay, who are working on the silent auction for the WRLC’s first big fundraiser, our dinner on May 1st.   (Check back for more details on this.)   They had great ideas about potential auction items.  We’re looking for all kinds of things — art, gift certificates, services, etc. — so if anyone out there has anything to contribute, please let me know.  It would really help us out.

Also, check out our homepage for newly-posted information about the class settlement in the Perez v. Newburgh Auto Spa case. 

Thanks to our resident geek, Dan, for setting up this blog.

– Tricia