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CONNECTICUT NEWS

Contractors Shortchange Immigrant Workers
March 20, 2006
By HILDA MUÑOZ, Courant Staff Writer Carlos Romero left two sons and their mother in Texas and moved to Connecticut last year after watching a TV newscast that said New England had the best-paying construction jobs.

The 38-year-old Honduran immigrant was on the verge of a divorce, but he still had the boys to support and liked the idea of earning more money, he said.

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So he left his home of 19 years and followed the prospect of higher wages to Meriden, where a cousin offered him a place to stay. It wasn't long before he found a job with a drywall contractor, building hotel suites for the Hilton and Marriott chains in Newington, Rocky Hill and Wallingford.

The $20-an-hour wage he was promised was nearly double what he earned in Texas, Romero said, but he and the other workers at the site - some, like him, permanent legal residents, others undocumented immigrants - were paid only a fraction of their wages.

"If you knew what I've been through. I couldn't provide what was necessary at home," he said.

He survived on instant noodles and sometimes got discounts on coffee and cookies at a gas station near one of the job sites. But Romero never missed a day of work, because he believed his boss's assurances that he would get all of his money, Romero said.

With the help of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, Romero and dozens of his coworkers eventually complained to the state Department of Labor. After a six-month investigation, Daniel Magee, an owner of New York Ceiling & Drywall, was arrested.

Cases of unscrupulous contractors shortchanging immigrant workers are not unusual, said Miguel Fuentes, a representative of the carpenters union who helped the workers with their case. He said he works on a dozen or more such cases a year.

"I've had more and more people surface because they network so well. I met a gentleman last Friday who had my card, and I'd never met him," Fuentes said.

The Department of Labor tracks complaints from people who haven't been paid their promised wages, but it doesn't investigate whether the people making the complaints can work in the country legally.

In all of 2005, 350 people in the construction industry reported that they hadn't been paid their promised wages. In 2006, 326 such complaints already have been filed.

Last year, the department began printing complaint forms in Spanish and very recently began tracking how many complaints are made in Spanish, said Gary Pechie, director of the wage and workplace standards division at the Department of Labor. Pechie said his department is keeping track of complaints made in Spanish to determine what areas of the state they are coming from.

"That way I can marshal my resources. ... It's more of an internal management tactic," Pechie said.

A majority of contractors follow the rules, said D'Arcy Didier, director of labor relations at the Connecticut Construction Industries Association. But some hire undocumented workers because they can pay them less and sometimes don't pay them at all, exploiting the workers' fear of being deported.

"Quite frankly, it does provide a competitive edge for non-union contractors who are not going to be following the law," he said.

Magee was arraigned last month in New Britain and charged with 69 counts of defrauding immigrant laborers, 57 counts of failure to pay wages, 12 counts of failure to pay premium overtime and one count of first-degree larceny. According to an arrest warrant, Magee did not pay his employees, most of whom were illegal immigrants from Central and South America, wages worth a total of $202,000.

Where the money went is unclear. Magee's attorney, Richard Lawlor, said his client is not responsible for the missing wages. He said the company became financially unstable when one of its principals went on a personal shopping spree with company money. But Magee did what he could to get the workers what they had earned, he said.

Romero said he noticed soon after he arrived at the construction site that there was something wrong. His first week on the job, a mob of 40 workers, armed with their tools, threatened to kill Magee at one of the job sites over eight weeks of back pay that he owed them, Romero said.

The uprising was quelled the following day at the carpenters union office in Wallingford. Magee arrived with a paper bag from Dunkin' Donuts filled with $55,000 in cash to pay most of them, Fuentes said.

"It was very emotional. My part was trying to keep them under control and preventing them from lashing out at him," said Fuentes. "You could see the expression in their faces, the tone in their language."

Magee paid the workers most of what he owed them, Fuentes said. Romero was happy with the $1,200 Magee had given him and thought the problem had been resolved.

But in the weeks that followed, Romero realized it wasn't an isolated incident. Magee hand-delivered cash-filled envelopes, but the money came sporadically and covered only part of the hours Romero worked, he said.

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"If we worked three weeks, he paid us one. We worked another two weeks, he paid us one. How many weeks are left?" said Romero.

He said he couldn't send his kids $600 a month in child support. When one of his sons asked for money for a calculator for school, Romero told him he didn't even have money to buy himself laundry detergent.

He wore the least dirty shirts to work and ate instant noodles three times a day to tide him over between payments.

Qaiser K. Yosufzai, who runs the Shell gas station and food mart next to the Courtyard by Marriott near Westfarms mall, said he remembers groups of eight to 10 workers buying instant noodles, Hostess cupcakes, cookies and coffee.

He said they would complain about not getting paid.

"Sometimes they would say, `Can we pay you tomorrow?' I would say, `OK.' Most of the time they were paying me," said Yosufzai. Sometimes he would give them discounts on the food and coffee, he said.

Romero said some days he resolved not to return to work, that he would ration the latest wad of cash from Magee for the essentials and look for another job. But he would return, day after day.

"I would always think the same thing: `Instead of sleeping at home, I could be working,'" he said. "It wasn't the best decision I made."

Some money was better than none, he told himself. Plus, he believed Magee's promises that their money was on its way, Romero said.

His last day was a Saturday. The ceilings and walls still needed work, but Magee said he would take care of it and told Romero to go home. When Romero asked about his back pay, Magee said he didn't have it and told him to go to the union or the Department of Labor, Romero said.

"I didn't waste any time. I went [to the union] that same day," Romero said.

He said he doesn't know whether he will ever get the money. But he said he's determined to see this case through. In February, he canceled a flight to Honduras when he heard there was a warrant for Magee's arrest.

"I'm not happy [that he was arrested] because he has a family that probably stays up at night worrying," Romero said. "I would like for him to think things through."