Ironbound Underground: Wage Theft & Workplace Violations Among Day Laborers in Newark's East Ward

Day laborers are workers who are employed on a day-by-day, temporary basis. Each morning, at informal hiring sites throughout the country known as “shape-up sites,” day laborers and employers negotiate short-term employment arrangements in an “open-air market.” For employers, these day labor markets provide easy access to a large pool of workers that they can hire when needed and release them when not. While there is limited official information on the nature and size of the day laborer workforce, the United States Government Accounting Office (“U.S. GAO”) and the 2004 National Day Labor Survey indicate that the day laborer community consists of mostly males with limited English proficiency that have recently migrated to the United States. Government reports and national surveys indicate that on any given day there are approximately 117,600 to 260,000 day laborers looking for work in the United States. Day laborers work in many different industries, including manual labor, construction, landscaping, moving, and food services. Homeowners also frequently employ day laborers for simple maintenance and home improvement projects. In the State of New Jersey, day laborers are entitled to the same legal protections that apply to all workers, regardless of immigration status. However, both federal government reports and the New Jersey Governor’s Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Immigrant Policy have found that day laborers are among the most economically vulnerable workers. Day laborers are exposed to workplace abuses because they are often unaware of their rights, fearful of complaining to authorities, have limited English proficiency, and work in high risk jobs.9 U.S. government reports have also found that due to inadequate data on day laborers, state and local government agencies responsible for enforcing workplace laws have failed to appropriately investigate workplace violations or enforce day laborers’ workplace rights. This report attempts to fill this information gap by profiling for the first time, the large contingent of day laborers that congregate daily in the Ironbound section of Newark to look for work. Following intake, and know your rights sessions, the Immigrant Workers’ Rights Clinic (“IWR Clinic”) at Seton Hall University Law School's Center for Social Justice systematically investigated and analyzed the status of day laborers in the Ironbound section of Newark for this comprehensive report. Between February and April 2010, the IWR Clinic under supervision of Anjana Malhotra and Bryan Lonegan studied the problem by engaging directly with community leaders, government officials, police officers, business owners, national and local experts, and the day laborers themselves. The IWR Clinic observed and documented conditions at the Ironbound site where workers gather for work each morning on a daily basis, regularly attended several of the day laborers’ weekly meetings and conducted a survey of approximately half of the workers at the Ironbound site. As a result of its investigation, the IWR Clinic found that the Ironbound Day Laborers Endure a Significant Level of Workplace Violations, Especially in Wage Theft; the Financial Loss to the Workers Due to Wage Theft is Substantial; Workers Have Limited Recourse to Obtain Unpaid Wages; and Working Conditions and the Transient Nature of the Ironbound Shape-Up Site is Dangerous.