"We demand our back wages," read a sign in the hands of Sikh immigrant laborer and Queens Village resident Jaswinder Singh outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan Monday.
Jaswinder Singh and five other South Asian laborers joined Tushar Sheth, a lawyer for the Asian American Legal Defense Fund, and Javaid Tariq, the director of New York Construction Workers United, for a news conference before filing lawsuits later that afternoon.
Jaswinder Singh and the other laborers told reporters that they were sent home unpaid after long hours of physical labor and AALDEF is filing lawsuits in federal court on their behalf seeking back wages and attorney's fees. The laborers, four of whom are Queens residents, say they are owed thousands by their employers.
The workers are all members of NYCWU, an organization founded to protect the rights of immigrant construction workers throughout the five boroughs. The workers filed their cases against their respective employers simultaneously as the start of what NYCWU Director Javaid Tariq said would be an ongoing campaign against the violation of trades workers rights.
"There are many problems," Tariq said. "But the solution is one, and that is unity and organization."
Tariq translated for Jaswinder Singh, who held his employee ID, dated December 2005, as proof of his past employment. Singh said he was promised nearly $50,000 by EFG Construction in Baldwin, L.I. for his work at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Northport, L.I. To date, Jaswinder Singh said he has received only $4,000, though he has called EFG to recover his wages "a thousand times... [and they] just keep making excuses." Two other Queens Village residents, Gurdev Singh and Darshan Singh, worked with Jaswinder Singh and allege they were not paid at the rate they were promised either.
EFG Construction owner Edward George did not return phone calls for comment.
Tariq, who did this same sort of work nearly 20 years ago, said he knows "that there is no safety equipment, no machinery" to protect these workers.
Kalvinder Samra, a Sikh immigrant from India and a resident of Richmond Hill, performed masonry and construction work at PS 163 in Flushing over the course of nine weeks and he said he received only $1,000.
"Our incomes are low," Samra said. "Sometimes we have to work with our bare hands because the contractor won't give us equipment."
He said harassment is common at work and encouraged others to join the fight "for justice and real change in our industry." He is suing Five Star Contracting, based in downtown Manhattan, and the Staten Island based subcontractor, Dhillon Brothers, who hired him. No one at Five Star was available for comment and no listing could be found for Dhillon Brothers.
Richmond Hill resident Balvinder Singh says he is owed nearly $14,000 by Shariff Construction in Brooklyn, while Brooklyn resident Kahz Ahmed is waiting for more than $12,000 in back wages from Richmond Hill-based M&S Construction. No listings could be found for Shariff Construction or M&S Construction.
Sheth said he hoped the lawsuits would bring awareness to what he called the widespread problem of immigrant worker exploitation, adding that many general contractors knowingly hire inexpensive subcontractors that take advantage of their workers.
"We're working to expose this dynamic." He said, adding that he hopes "general contractors [become] more cognizant of what's going on the ground."
Tariq said many workers are afraid to come forward for fear of being "blacklisted" since they are often hired within a small community or because they are concerned about their immigration status. Both Sheth and Tariq declined to identify whether the plaintiffs were documented or undocumented immigrants, but said each of the men is entitled to his wages and safe working conditions under the law regardless of their status.
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