Manhattan workers stiffed by employers given new legal route to recoup stolen wages

New York City workers stiffed by their employers will now have a way to recover stolen wages from a new fund announced on Thursday.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg revealed a new pilot program to pay people who weren’t compensated by their bosses or whose employers went bankrupt and couldn’t pay them.

Bragg’s will office is also starting a new Worker Protection Unit, which will go after bad bosses who put their employees in danger and don’t pay them.

“[We’re] holding accountable companies and executives that exploit their workers, whether by jeopardizing their safety or stealing their wages,” Bragg said. “Again and again, we see companies taking advantage of our most vulnerable populations, including low-income and undocumented New Yorkers, and abusing power imbalances to line their pockets.”

The DA said his office has invested $100,000 in the Stolen Wage Fund and will throw $500,000 more in the pot if the pilot program succeeds.

“We are committed not only to prosecuting but recouping the lost wages,” Bragg said.

Manhattan workers can file claims within a year of a criminal case’s conclusion. The Department of Labor will vet the claims, and the DA’s office will pay them out. Under the previous infrastructure, employers convicted of stealing their employees’ wages didn’t mean those workers got paid.

City Comptroller Brad Lander said the new unit would curb pervasive wage theft by holding bad-faith Manhattan employers accountable and afford much-needed legal recourse for victims of worker exploitation.

“Tens of thousands of New York City workers are cheated of their wages year after year, and while someone can get arrested for stealing your $200 TV, there are often no criminal consequences to stealing $2,000 of your wages,” Lander said.

More than $1 billion in wages are stolen annually in the U.S., according to Cornell University’s Worker Institute. The DA’s office, in recent years, has targeted its focus on the construction and real estate industries. Bragg said the new unit would expand to investigate other low-pay industries where wage theft runs rampant, including home healthcare agencies, hotels, and fast food restaurants.

The DA said the new unit will pursue more severe charges, including reckless endangerment and manslaughter, against bosses for forcing their employees to work in dangerous environments.

The nascent office and the fund, which contains money seized from asset forfeiture proceedings, are expected to aid many workers without documentation, who officials noted Thursday are exploited in high numbers.

“Wage theft is a systemic abuse that needs to be rooted out from all industries and be addressed as a high-priority issue,” Nilbia Coyote, the executive director of New Immigrant Community Empowerment, said. “We demand that all workers receive their well-deserved payment at the end of the day no matter of their race, color or immigration status.”

Workers’ rights advocates heralded the move.

“New York’s construction industry is polluted with crooked contractors whose very business model is based on exploiting and stealing from the city’s most vulnerable workers — immigrants, people of color, and the formerly incarcerated,” Michael Hellstrom, vice president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, said.

“I also hope the word gets out to the thousands of workers who face exploitation and hardship on the job.”