Thread: Deputize construction workers to help police industry

Patrick: Deputize construction workers to help police industry

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By Jim O'Sullivan/State House News Service
State House News Service
Tue May 15, 2007, 04:43 PM EDT

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BOSTON - Gov. Deval Patrick is open to "deputizing" construction industry workers to gather information about other employees and conditions on job sites, including Social Security information, and then turn it over to state authorities, he said Tuesday.

The strategy would allow trade union members to collect personal data about workers' federal statuses, then relay it to the attorney general or other law enforcement officials. During a breakfast speech at a Boston hotel, Patrick said he thinks the approach could improve working conditions and increase state tax collections.

When a table of carpenters union officials broke into vigorous applause after Patrick began discussing "the idea of deputizing workers, unions ... and DAs, for that matter," the governor said, "I am not talking about doing the actual enforcement, that's not your job ... but to collect the information, the basic facts, and create those packets and give those to the A.G. or to deputies deputized to district attorneys for enforcement, I think is a strategy that I'm open to and I think that the attorney general is open to, as well."

A Patrick aide, speaking anonymously, cautioned that the governor plans no formal proposal, and said Patrick's use of the term "deputize" signaled nothing official. Workers and unions, though, should "be part of the process for helping to identify" employment law violations, and currently report wage law violations, the aide said.

Both Patrick and the House increased the budget for Attorney General Martha Coakley's wage enforcement program by $453,000, and Patrick said Tuesday that he thought the outside agents gathering personal data could augment an office whose "resources aren't there to collect the evidence."

Patrick raised the subject after a speech to over 200 construction industry officials at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. During a question-and-answer session, Patrick pointed to deputizing unionists as an idea for enforcing wage law.

"All apart from the revenues that the state foregoes, there are issues of basic fairness in the way people are treated that have to be addressed in the context of that whole underground economy," Patrick said.

Later, he told the News Service, "It's an idea that I've gotten from a number of sources, and I don't know whether it will work, but the idea is asking people who are on job sites to collect the information about the accuracy of Social Security numbers and so on, to create a package of facts that then are given to the enforcement authorities to do their jobs."

But he took exception to a reporter's question about concerns over vigilantism, saying, "I just said, the unions aren't doing the enforcement. The question is getting the facts ... Any way to get the facts and collect them accurately so the enforcement authorities can do their job is a good thing."

In an e-mailed statement, a spokeswoman for Labor and Workforce Development Secretary Suzanne Bump said she wanted increase collaboration across state government to "identify concerns with the current employee classification laws and wage and hour enforcement programs and to look for new ways to partner with others to make enforcement more robust, more consistent and more effective."

Bump told the News Service later there was "confusion" over what Patrick had said, adding that what he said was in the larger context of employment fraud that the administration is looking into through an internal study. "That's what the governor was speaking to," Bump said after testifying before a legislative committee.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Martha Coakley said she supports Bump's collaborative efforts. "We have encouraged people to bring us any information they think may be relevant to a possible violation," said spokeswoman Emily LaGrassa.

The carpenters union said deputizing their members would help mitigate "a huge problem" with "terrible working conditions" perpetrated by companies that hire unauthorized immigrants then subject them to substandard conditions.

"Sheer exploitation is what's happening out there," said Joseph Power, a member of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters executive board, calling the hiring of workers who don't pay taxes and whose employers don't report the workers part of an "outlaw economy."

The state's leading immigrant advocacy group criticized the practice of recruiting workers to compile information.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said, "What we all need to be careful of here is that immigration law is very complicated, and there are over 24 different versions of legal status." Non-governmental employees should not be allowed to round up information on other workers, he said: "In our opinion, a fellow worker or a fellow citizen does not have that training."

Noting that his group supports wage law enforcement regardless of immigration status, Noorani said, "Our primary concern here is that an individual who looks or sounds like an immigrant should not be held to a higher standard of documentation."

Policymakers at all levels are grappling with how to balance the private sector's reliance on unauthorized immigrants as a source of labor with popular demands for stricter enforcement of immigration laws and more humane approaches to turning away or assimilating immigrants. The federal government, which Massachusetts lawmakers have asked to develop immigration reform before they deal with state-level issues, is stalled in pushing such a bill through Congress, with a divided Washington further bogged down by the political pressures brought to bear by a burgeoning presidential campaign.

Patrick's four-month record includes a reversal of former Gov. Mitt Romney's directive that State Police should arrest illegal immigrants during routine patrols, unsuccessfully negotiating with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to keep targets of a New Bedford sweep in-state during their federal processing, and issuing an executive order forbidding unauthorized immigrants in connection with state contract work.

Robert Haynes, president of the state AFL-CIO chapter, said Patrick isn't looking to promote a system of co-workers tracking each other's legality, but trying to recoup lost tax revenues and level the industry's competition.

Patrick on Tuesday delivered the stump speech he has used when discussing economic development, stressing the administration's progress on state regulations and legislation, and encouraging business leaders to bring not just complaints but proposals to his administration.

Introducing Patrick, New England Regional Council of Carpenters chief Mark Ehrlich credited Patrick with visiting job sites during his underdog gubernatorial campaign in an effort to learn about the industry. After their first meeting, Ehrlich said, he came away with an impression of Patrick as "bright, thoughtful and visionary - too bad he doesn't have a chance."

Taking the podium, Patrick drew laughs when he recalled the meeting as "friendly and fundamentally pointless ... very serious, very substantive, and then kind of a sweet, 'There there, you can't win'. As my grandmother would say, 'Look at you now'."

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/homepage/x1151568091

This sounds like a great idea.