In construction boom, immigrant workers

face perils of exploitation

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JONATHAN WIGGS/GLOBE STAFF

Omar Pedroza installed drywall at an East Boston apartment

project. As a job foreman, he said he sometimes had to stuff cash
from a subcontractor into his pockets to pay co-workers.
By Beth Healy and Megan Woolhouse
SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

Luis Mayancela was 15 years old when he fell from the roof of a
house in Portland, Maine, where he was helping fasten shingles. He
tumbled two stories, severely breaking his leg.
His employer did not call an ambulance. Instead, a co-worker drove
the Brockton High School freshman 75 miles in an old work van,
across state lines, to a hospital in Massachusetts. As they crawled
through rush-hour traffic, Mayancela had no idea his boss would
try to dodge responsibility for the accident.
I couldnt breathe, much less talk, recalled Mayancela, an Ecuadoran who took the job in 2013 to help support his family. Its pain
you dont forget.
He is one of thousands of immigrants, many undocumented, helping meet the demand for workers in the regions booming construction industry. They haul slabs of sheetrock and climb rooftops and
dusty scaffolds, doing often dangerous work for contractors seeking
cheap labor.
A Globe investigation found that these workers, eager for a
paycheck, are often paid below the prevailing wage and illegally, in
cash. They are also the most likely to be subjected to unsafe work
conditions, without insurance to cover medical bills or lost pay if
they get hurt. And the unscrupulous contractors who employ them
are too seldom caught and penalized.
This is not about catching a few bad actors that are dragging down
the industry, said Diego Low, director of the Metrowest Worker
Center in Framingham, which helps workers fight for fair wages

and safety. Weve evolved a system for providing subsidized labor

to build our houses, and its based on the vulnerability of the workforce.
Federal officials identified 910 willful or repeat violations that involved hospitalizations or deaths in the Massachusetts construction
industry over the past three years, according to public records requested from the US Labor Departments Occupational Safety and
Health Administration. Of those, 98 percent took place on jobs run
by nonunion contractors, OSHA said.
The real number of injuries is likely higher, advocates and government officials said, because undocumented workers on these job
sites often are pressured not to report accidents.
Interviews with more than three dozen construction workers, legal
advocates, and regulators, as well as construction site visits and the
review of hundreds of pages of records, reveal industry practices
that routinely exploit immigrant workers. They also point to companies that are repeat offenders, undercutting legitimate contractors who play by the rules.
Sometimes the victims are minors, or young men barely in their
20s.
Among the personal stories uncovered by the Globe:
A 23-year-old roofer from Ecuador shattered his collarbone after
falling from a 32-foot ladder in Waltham during Christmas week in
2014. His employer told him to drive himself home, even though he
had been briefly knocked unconscious. It took five days for him to

get medical care, and a year-and-a-half before receiving the surgery

he needed to repair the break.
A dozen immigrant workers repeatedly sought a combined
$150,00 in back wages from a New Hampshire drywaller who, they
said, threatened not to pay them if they quit. When they finally
made plans to leave, he left a profanity-laced voicemail on the
phone of one of the workers.
A former Boston restaurateur-turned-contractor routinely failed
to pay immigrant construction workers, even after they traveled to
his home to complain and court judgments were entered against
him.

These workers are particularly susceptible to abuse. They

switch locations; they switch bosses regularly. By the time they
complain to us, or we become aware of it, the bad actors may
be long gone from the scene.
Attorney General Maura Healey

We know these workers are particularly susceptible to abuse,

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said in an interview. They switch locations; they switch bosses regularly. By the
time they complain to us, or we become aware of it, the bad actors
may be long gone from the scene.
Plenty of US citizens and documented workers get hurt in construction, too. But undocumented immigrants, deeply woven into the
fabric of the economy in ways often overlooked by the public and
political candidates, face additional struggles.

Isidoro Peralta fell from a 32-foot ladder while working in Waltham. His broken collarbone healed improperly, and he had to fight for medical care for a
year-and-a-half before having corrective surgery at Boston Medical Center.

Many do not speak English and are unfamiliar with federal and
state labor laws, which require employers to pay them at least minimum wage and carry workers compensation. These workers are
often improperly characterized as independent contractors by employers who want to avoid paying their insurance and payroll taxes.
Theres no contractual obligation between the employer and their
workers, said Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, longtime executive director
of the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health,
who was recently promoted to run the national organization.
Theres no written agreement that if they speak up about health
and safety, that they still have a job.

When injured, these workers can get lost in medical limbo. If they
tell doctors they were hurt on a work site but have no pay stubs or
documentation to prove who their employer is, it can be next to impossible to get care, according to lawyers, advocates, and regulators.
Thats what happened to a 16-year-old Guatemalan youth, nicknamed Baby, on the work sites of a Lynn contractor. He plunged to
the ground last fall from a ladder while lugging too much wood for
his 118-pound frame.
His employer dropped him off at home that night instead of taking
him to a doctor, according to the boys account to the Globe, his
lawyer, and advocates. He was for months declined medical care
because he had no legal guardian and no employer offering to pay
his insurance, his lawyer said.
In another case, Isidoro Peralta, the Ecuadoran roofer, had to fight
for medical care for a year-and-a-half after falling from a ladder in
Waltham. While he waited, his collarbone healed improperly and
he could no longer lift weight with his right arm. He was out of
work, without pay, and in pain.
When Peralta talked to his employer at AN Construction, Nothing
happened, he said.
Indeed, his boss, Angel Namina, denied to his insurer that Peralta
was hurt on the job, according to Peraltas workers compensation
claim filed with the state.

The owner of the Milford construction outfit did not answer calls to
his phone and could not be reached. He has failed to pay a fine for
a prior serious violation with OSHA for failing to guard against fall
hazards, according to public records.
Peraltas lawyer fought the claim denial and reached an agreement
with the insurer, so Peralta could have surgery. His doctor at Boston Medical Center said he had to cut apart his clavicle and repair
it. Peralta said he was warned that if the doctor missed by a quarterinch and sliced an artery, Peralta would be at risk of dying within a
minute.
I did it, said Peralta through a translator, his youthful smile covering up many months of stress. Thank God it came out OK.
. . .
AT LUXURY CONDOMINIUMS in Wellesley and modern apartment complexes in Chelsea, as well as building projects for colleges
and major retailers, developers have been accused of looking the
other way when subcontractors underpay workers and cut corners
on safety.
Wage and safety violations have resulted in 1,300 complaints in the
past three years just to the Massachusetts attorney generals office.
Some incidents have involved broken limbs, concussions, and
wounds that went untreated for long periods because employers
failed to provide the required insurance.

Many workers are urged not to say that injuries occur on a work
site. Some fear losing their jobs if they complain, or worse, being
exposed as undocumented, then deported.
Mayancela, who fell from the roof in Maine in the summer of 2013,
was lucky in one way: He eventually received the care he needed,
after being transported to Boston Childrens Hospital and later having a rod surgically placed in his femur.
Low, the Metrowest worker advocate, helped him navigate medical
appointments. A Medford lawyer who specializes in such cases, Stacie Sobosik, cut through layers of subcontractors to find an employer in the chain whose insurance would pay for his coverage.
It had nothing whatsoever to do with our company, although it
dragged us through the mud for a while, said King Weinstein, the
Old Orchard Beach, Maine-based general contractor at the house
where Mayancela fell. He said his firm ran its usual checks on the
Massachusetts roofing subcontractor, Force Corp., and confirmed
it had liability insurance and workers comp coverage at the time it
was hired.
But those checks did not turn up problems at Force or with its general manager, Juliano Teles Fernandes.
Mayancela was receiving pay on the Portland job from Twin Pines
Construction Inc., a company owned by Fernandes.
He and companies he has owned or managed have been cited for
more than 100 violations since 2007, by federal safety regulators,

including some that endangered workers lives, according to public

records.
Over his career, Fernandes has racked up obligations and fines of
$1.5 million with OSHA that have not been paid. The US attorneys
office in Boston is suing to collect those.
Fernandes and his Twin Pines firm were cited by the agency in May
2013 for serious and willful violations. That June, Fernandes let his
workers comp policy lapse, according to public records. A month
later, Mayancela fell from makeshift scaffolding in Maine.
Fernandes would claim to OSHA investigators that yet another subcontractor was the teens employer. But if there was such an assignment, it was informal and did not relieve Fernandes of his responsibility. The insurer for the other subcontractor the same as
Forces ultimately covered the claim. Force, which has had offices
in Woburn, Clinton, and Lunenburg, was cited by OSHA in the Mayancela case for having a child under age 16 do hazardous construction work and for failing to keep proper date-of-birth records.
Its illegal in Maine to hire anyone under age 18 for roofing. Yet the
fine was modest: $15,350.

JONATHAN WIGGS/GLOBE STAFF

Luis Mayancela, who is now 18, fell off a roof and broke
his leg while doing construction work in Portland,
Maine, at age 15.
Meanwhile, even the serious injury of a 15-year-old and a string
of fines didnt move Force or Fernandes to change their ways.
Last December, Force was sanctioned yet again, for exposing
roofers to potentially fatal fall hazards, and for what OSHA called
unacceptable behavior that must change before a workers life
or career is destroyed.
Fernandes could not be located at his listed addresses and declined to comment through a spokeswoman. This summer, fed-

eral authorities reached a settlement with Force to pay $2.4 million in back wages and damages to 478 workers for willful violations.
Force, in a statement at the time, said, We take our commitment
to our employees seriously and have cooperated fully with the
DOL in its review, and are pleased to have resolved this issue in
the best interest of our employees.
Force also said, in response to Globe inquiries, that it is now requiring more safety training for workers and is actively monitoring all job sites for compliance. We now better understand
how critical it is to provide OSHA with feedback and contest findings in real time.
. . .
STACIE SOBOSIK, the Medford attorney who represents injured
workers, said the most frustrating part of these cases is how general contractors persist, even after egregious workplace violations, in hiring abusive subcontractors.
They dont care. Theyre going to keep using this company because theyre cheap labor, Sobosik said. Theres a reason that
theyre so inexpensive compared to the market, she said. It
doesnt come free, that discount.
Force recently landed a job working on a new 447-unit development at Somervilles Assembly Row. The contractor that hired
the company is Callahan Construction Managers, a Bridgewater

company that has managed several of the largest residential projects in the Boston area in recent years.
Callahan, unlike Bostons downtown commercial developers, often hires nonunion labor. The firm has been criticized by public
officials in Quincy and Cambridge for allegedly failing to thoroughly vet its subcontractors.
The companys president, Pat Callahan, said in a statement that
when he hired Force, he was unaware of its issues with the Labor
Department and OSHA.
Since these matters came to light, Callahan has employed a
stringent workforce monitoring process, and we are enforcing
the right to inspect payroll records, he said in the statement. In
the meantime, we are confident in the work Force Corp. is performing at Assembly Row.
General contractors bid on multimillion-dollar jobs and divvy up
the work to a thicket of smaller firms. It has proven notoriously
difficult for authorities to police those subcontractors, according
to regulators in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut.
People, when they cheat the system, recognize big cost savings,
said Rudolph Ogden, an attorney for New Hampshires Department of Labor. He said the state is working to crack down on employers who break the law, but, A lot of times we only hear when
people stop getting paid. Or get hurt.
. . .

JUAN GONZALEZ, a 36-year-old from Mexico, worked for Yankee Drywall Corp. in Hudson, N.H., for nearly 15 years. His father, nephew, and cousin worked there too. He put up with the
companys difficult owners, he said, because the money was
good. He started at $26 per hour and worked his way up to $33,
and made enough to send some home to his mother.
I love what I do, Gonzalez said. Create something. You can be
proud.
The company is owned by Gerald Gerry Crete, a gruff 59-yearold who runs the business with his wife, Martha Laramee, out of
their home. They have a tidy yard and $50,000, his-and-hers,
four-door Ford pickup trucks, black and white, in the driveway.
There would be weeks the workers were paid, followed by missed
weeks, then promises of catching up. By late last year, Yankee
allegedly owed more than $150,000 to a dozen workers, including Gonzalez and his family members.
They used to tell us, If you leave, Im not going to give you the
money. So youve got to show up for work tomorrow, said Iran
Gonzalez, Juans cousin.
In late December, Juan Gonzalez received an angry voicemail
from Crete, peppered with expletives, pleading with him and the
other workers to return, and promising they would be paid. But
the Gonzalez family had had enough: This time, they took their
complaints to the authorities.

You have to be a tough guy in this business, Crete said during

an interview in the couples kitchen in March. He called the industry crooked, and bitterly blamed missed payments to his
crew on contractors who, he said, owed him money.
He said he owed the men no more than $5,000 each in back pay.
But Juan Gonzalez said he alone is owed more than $20,000.
Im broke, Crete said. He claimed to have filed for bankruptcy
protection, but there were no such records in federal court in
New Hampshire.
In April, Attorney General Healeys office investigated and cited
the company and Crete $26,000 for intentionally failing to pay
employees and misclassifying them as independent contractors
to avoid paying benefits and workers compensation.
Crete failed to respond to the AGs demand for records, according
to Healey spokeswoman Jillian Fennimore, and allegedly ignored multiple attempts to resolve the allegations.
New Hampshires labor department is pursuing Yankee for
$171,000 in unpaid wages plus penalties. A hearing is set on the
matter for October.
. . .

JONATHAN WIGGS/GLOBE STAFF

Mayancela and his little brother Filemon, 14 months,

spent time together at Mayancelas Brockton home.
EVEN WHEN AUTHORITIES do catch firms breaking the law, it
can be cheaper for employers to pay fines than follow the rules.
Some firms simply skip town and open under a new name.
Of the 1,300 complaints to the Massachusetts attorney general
over the past three years, the office issued 455 citations against
construction employers, sometimes multiple times, seeking restitution totaling $2.4 million and nearly $1 million in penalties,
according to public records requests.

But companies often fail to pay even small sums. Healeys office
has collected just one-third of the $1.7 million in violations since
January 2015, or $580,234. The bulk of the rest is under appeal
or past due.
The AGs office cant readily say how much it collected prior to
2015, because the records were not computerized.
In Massachusetts, workers have to navigate a number of agencies
to complain about employers who break the law. Neither the attorney general nor OSHA can easily shut down a company, even
if it has multiple violations against it. The state Department of
Industrial Accidents can issue stop-work orders when its investigators find companies not paying for workers compensation.
Governor Charlie Baker and Deval Patrick before him have heard
the complaints of union executives that firms paying in the low
$20s per hour or less, without overtime or insurance, are unfair
competition. The residential union construction rate in Boston,
including insurance and benefits, is $45 per hour, according to
the New England Regional Council of Carpenters.
This is wage theft, said Manny Gines, an organizer for the union, who travels the Northeast helping workers and confronting
companies that are breaking wage laws. We really cant compete
with them if theyre not getting paid.
. . .
THE RECENTLY COMPLETED One North of Boston complex in
Chelsea, a $110 million project with some 450 apartments,

boasts luxury studios for $1,735 a month and two-bedrooms for

$2,390. There are yoga and spin studios, an indoor basketball
court, and doggie day care.
The general contractor was Callahan, the Bridgewater company.
On one visit by the Globe, Universal Drywall of Auburn, N.H.,
had about 30 workers framing and building walls at the massive
property; only a handful were marked as employees on sign-in
sheets.
The rest were classified as subcontractors the same practice
the attorney general challenged when it sued Universal in 2014,
alleging a pattern of unfair competition on the Chelsea job because it did not pay workers as employees. That case is ongoing,
according to the AGs office.
Omar Pedroza, an ex-foreman on the site, was asked to illegally
distribute cash wages to the workers, he told the Globe and his
legal advocates. He sometimes had to drive long distances to pick
up money from a Universal subcontractor he was working for,
stuffing some $5,000 in cash into his pockets to distribute to
workers.
A lawyer for Universal, Simon C. Leeming, said in a statement,
Universal has never paid an employee in cash, never. If employees received cash, he said, it was done by a subcontractor. He
said the companys subcontractors are required to comply with
the law.

In a March letter responding to a Globe inquiry, Callahans financial chief, Dennis Sheehan, said, We take these matters very seriously and will conduct an investigation. He also said, We go
to great lengths to screen and monitor our subcontractors at all
levels.
After the alleged issues in Chelsea, Callahan decided not to use
Universal as a subcontractor on its Marina Bay residential project now underway in Quincy, spokeswoman Lisa Nickerson said.
Universal is still working for Callahan on other jobs.
. . .
LAST FALL, CONSTRUCTION workers and organizers chanted
Callahans name in downtown Wellesley, outside luxury condos
called the Belclare, on behalf of a worker who wasnt being paid.
Callahan representatives said the company has been unfairly targeted by union advocates, and that it had taken over the Belclare
job from another firm, and so was not responsible for hiring the
subcontractors.
One of those subs was William Ashmore, a former owner of
Stoddards pub in downtown Boston. A group of workers went
looking for Ashmore on Cape Cod to get paid, to no avail. Three
sued him in small claims court, alleging he owed them thousands
of dollars. But he failed to show up in court, even after promising
at a New Bedford worker center meeting to pay the men.
Finally, the court issued a warrant for his arrest.

I had every plan to deal with it, Ashmore said. Some instances
were misunderstandings, he said, or a failure by workers to provide accurate addresses. Once, he said, another firm should have
paid the workers.
Im a little fish, Ashmore said, in a very, very big sea of monsters.
Beth Healy can be reached at beth.healy@globe.com. Follow
her on Twitter@HealyBeth. Megan Woolhouse can be reached
at megan.woolhouse@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @MegWoolhouse.