Immigrant workers charge wage theft

At a press conference held June 29 outside Minute Men Staffing in the predominantly Latino/a neighborhood of southwest Detroit, current and former workers at Mastronardi Produce in Livonia, Mich., spoke of their dual exploitation by the company and the Minute Men temporary agency.

Many workers talked about long, unpaid hours waiting for a job assignment. Often the staffing agency would then send them home. If chosen, they were crammed into vans and taken to Mastronardi’s factory, where they might again wait outside in the cold until they were needed.

Like many companies and temp agencies, Mastronardi and Minute Men take advantage of workers’ undocumented status and fear of retaliation and being deported. The immigrant workers who spoke at the press conference showed great courage. However, with Detroit’s unemployment rate well above the national average, many African-American, white and documented Latino/a workers are desperate for work and have also experienced the horrors of working at Mastronardi through the agency of Minute Men.

On-the-job conditions at Mastronardi are deplorable. Workdays of 12 and even more hours are the norm. Worker safety is blatantly disregarded. Examples given were that workers were forced to work around poisonous gases, including during a major leak of ammonia, and were denied bathroom breaks. Injured workers, including an eight-year employee who spoke, get no compensation. The Southeast Michigan Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (Semcosh) has filed complaints on behalf of the workers.

A lawsuit filed by the Maurice and Jane Sugar Law Center for Social and Economic Justice charges Mastronardi and Minute Men with improper paycheck deductions, unpaid work time and violations of overtime and minimum wage laws. The workers had to pay for the van rides and for employee identification badges and were docked for “nonexistent lunch periods and breaks,” according to the Center.

Maurice Sugar was the attorney for the United Auto Workers during the 1937 Flint sit-down strike. He and Jane Sugar were prominent labor and civil rights attorneys in Detroit for many years.

Speaking in support of the workers were State Rep. Rasheeda Tlaib and Detroit City Council member Kwame Kenyatta, along with representatives of the Sugar Law Center, Semcosh and the Alliance for Immigration Reform.