NELP - Working Without Laws

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A Survey of Employment andLabor Law Violations in New York City

By Annette Bernhardt, Diana Polson and James DeFilippis

With

Ruth Milkman, Nik Theodore, Douglas Heckathorn, Mirabai Auer,Ana Luz González, Victor Narro, Jason Perelshteyn and Michael Spiller

Working Without Laws

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New York City Communityand Labor Advisory Board

Arican Services CommitteeAndolan—Organizing South Asian WorkersAsian American Legal Deenseand Education FundCommunity Voices HeardConsortium or Worker EducationDomestic Workers UnitedEl Centro del InmigranteFith Avenue CommitteeGarment Industry Development CorporationGreater New York Laborers—EmployersCooperation and Education Trust (LECET)Latin American Workers’ ProjectLatinoJustice PRLDEFMake the Road New YorkMinKwon Center or Community ActionNew York and Vicinity Carpenters LaborManagement CorporationNew York City Central Labor CouncilNew York Committee or OccupationalSaety and Health (NYCOSH)New York Hotel and Motel Trades CouncilNew York Jobs with JusticeNew York Taxi Workers AllianceNorthwest Bronx Communityand Clergy CoalitionQueens Community HouseRestaurant Opportunities Center o New YorkRetail, Wholesale andDepartment Store Union, UFCWSeedcoSEIU Local 32BJSEIU Local 1199The Bronx DeendersThe Legal Aid SocietyThe New York Immigration CoalitionUFCW Local 1500Urban Justice Center —Community Development ProjectWorkers United

National Advisory Board

Eileen AppelbaumRutgers UniversityJennier Gordon,Fordham Law SchoolMark Handcock,University o WashingtonMarielena Hincapie,National Immigration Law CenterMartin Iguchi,UCLA/RandManuel Pastor,University o Southern CaliorniaCathy RuckelshausNational Employment Law Project

Advisory Boards

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Acknowledgements

We incurred numerous debts in conducting thisstudy in New York City. Above all, we thank the1,432 New Yorkers who took valuable time outo their lives to participate in our survey. We alsoare grateul to the members o our national andlocal advisory boards, as well as the sta o theNational Employment Law Project, or invaluablehelp throughout all phases o the project.The elding o our survey could not havehappened without the talented and dedicatedteam o interviewers and translators wehad in New York. This team included ZayneAbdessalam, Ingrid Baez, Mame-Yaa Bosumtwo,Lana Cheung, Lourdes Diaz, Beatriz Gil, IlsoonHan, Julia Heming, Marta Kuersten, JulitaKwapinska, Emmanuel Louizaire, Olga Mexina,Eliseo Perez, Kwanza Price, MohammedRahman, Gabriela Reardon and Rachel Soltis.Majed Abbadi, Ju Bum Cha, Ewa Grigar andHumayun Kabir assisted with written translationearly on in the project.We are enormously grateul to the Joseph S.Murphy Institute or Worker Education and LaborStudies or donating vital space and resourcesor the elding o our survey. Gregory Mantsios,Paula Finn, Jeannette Gabriel, and the rest o thesta at the Institute warmly welcomed us intotheir oces and provided us with an invaluablehome base or our project.Similarly, we thank the ollowing institutions andindividuals or generously donating space orconducting our surveys: Carlos Molina, LorraineAltman and Chie Arnaldo Bernabe at HostosCommunity College; Aldrin Raael Bonilla andLesley Vann at CUNY in the Heights; DavidAndersson, Nahar Alam and Liliana Tovar at theDiversity Center o Queens; Ron Thomas at YorkCollege; and Ingrid Schwazkio, Carol Summarand George Miles at the Brooklyn FriendsMeeting House.A special thanks goes out to the ollowing peopleor enthusiastically responding to our manyrequests or help during the project: DimpleAbichandani, Rajani Adhikary, Chitra Aiyar, SteveChoi, Carrie Cleason, Darly Corniel, FrancineDelgado, Bhairavi Desai, Je Eichler, Nai Fowler,Andrew Friedman, Daniel Gross, ArtemioGuerra, Annabelle Heckler, Janet Hines, SherryKane, Chauncey Lennon, Rebecca Lurie, JamesMumm, Ed Ott, Lenore Palladino, Amadou PapaDiao, Ai-jen Poo, Rizwan Raja, Christine Riordan,Kate Rubin, Sekou Siby, Zoe Sullivan, RonThomas and Sondra Youdelman.For their invaluable comments on drats othis report, we thank Laura Caruso, AndrewFriedman, Priscilla Gonzalez, Saru Jayaraman,Raj Nayak, Chris Owens, Cathy Ruckelshaus,Joel Shuro, Rebecca Smith, Paul Sonnand Elly Spicer.Madonna Camel, Yuteh Cheng, Jay Fraserand Bob Lee o the Survey Research Centerat the University o Caliornia, Berkeley providedexpert assistance with interviewer training andthe programming o the survey instrument.The survey instrument was translated intoSpanish by Juanita Norori, and Alredo Burgoscreated the pictographs we used in ourrecruitment documents.

This research was generously unded bythe Ford Foundation, the John RandolphHaynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, theJoyce Foundation and the Russell SageFoundation. We greatly appreciate thesupport we received rom Whitney Smith,Diane Cornwell and Héctor Cordero-Guzmán.We are especially indebted to Eric Wanner,Aixa Cintrón-Veléz and Katherine McFate,without whom this project would not havebeen possible. The views expressed in thisreport are solely those o the authors.