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IUPAT DC 35’s Longtime Member Kathleen Santora Gets Appointed to City of Lynn’s Wage Theft Advisory Commission (MA)

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

by Journal Staff * March 15, 2019

Longtime IUPAT District Council 35-member Kathleen Santora, a leading advocate of women’s recruitment into the building trades, joins city’s advisory board to fight wage theft and worker’s rights violations in City of Lynn

Painters Union District Council 35 is proud to announce that member Kathleen Santora, an advocate of workers’ rights in the building trades and a Lynn resident, has accepted a position on the City of Lynn’s newly created Wage Theft Advisory Committee.

The Wage Theft Advisory Committee, created as part of a city ordinance, will begin meeting bi-monthly to ensure that known violators of Massachusetts wage laws do not receive contracts with the City.

“Now that the committee has been appointed, I am eager to get to work. Wage theft violations occur all over the country, and I’d like Lynn to set an example that this will not be tolerated in this city,” said Ms. Santora.

Ms. Santora was nominated to the position by North Shore Labor Council President Jeff Crosby in part for her tireless efforts on behalf of workers’ rights, particularly those of women.

Through IUPAT DC 35, Ms. Santora has been a leading advocate of women in the workforce. In addition to her participation in DC 35’s Women in Action program which seeks to reach out to all women in the trades, Ms. Santora participates in leading unions in the Tradeswomen Tuesday initiative and Girls in Trades events.

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The Fight Against Wage Theft

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

by Chaz Bolte
March 8, 2016

In some instances, simply being a community advocate for local workers’ rights is what it takes to further establish the IUPAT positive force, and a way of life, for local residents.

Wage theft, the illegal practice of not paying workers for all of their work by violating minimum wage laws, not paying overtime, denying them breaks and making them work off the clock, is a major problem in the United States.

According to a study for the National Employment Law Project, the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment and the Center on Urban Economic Development:

  • Fully 26 percent of workers were paid less than the legally required minimum wage in the previous work week.
  • More than a quarter of respondents worked more than 40 hours during the previous week. Of those, 76 percent were not paid the legally required overtime rate by their employers.
  • Women were significantly more likely than men to experience minimum wage violations, and foreign-born workers were nearly twice as likely as their U.S.-born counterparts to have a minimum wage violation.
  • Foreign-born Latino workers had the highest minimum wage violation rates of any racial/ethnic group. But among U.S.-born workers, there were significant race differences: African-American workers had a violation rate triple that of their white counterparts.
  • Some 86 percent of respondents worked sufficient consecutive hours to be legally entitled to at least one meal break during the previous week. Of these workers, more than two-thirds (69 percent) received no break at all, had their break shortened, were interrupted by their employer, or worked during the break-all of which constitute a violation of meal break law.

 

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(Click here to view PDF of Study)