Special to the Journal
The Revere City Council debated and passed a wage theft ordinance filed by Councilor At-Large Juan Pablo Jaramillo that would add protections to workers in Revere who are victims of wage theft. The proposal which has been kicking around various council subcommittees for months and had a public hearing earlier in October was heard for a final time in the Legislative Affairs Subcommittee ahead of the council meeting on Monday.
Councillor At-Large Jaramillo testified in the subcommittee meeting with his 3-year old son Lucas in support of the proposal he authored and filed. In his testimony he referred to an excerpt from a children’s book named “Yes, We Can” by Diana Cohn, he said he found walking from his home to city hall at the little library in Sony Myers Park which he was taking Lucas to before the council meeting. The book is about the 2002 janitorial strike across the country. The excerpt describes a single mother taking care of her son “Carlitos” and her own mother. It details the struggles she faces to afford her mom’s medicine and how the economic stress she faces keeps her from spending meaningful time with her son, Carlitos. He closed by saying that for “low-wage workers and workers who work under dangerous conditions sometimes the pay does not even come because of wage theft” and that “this ordinance would help prevent that.”
The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 35 sent a letter to councilors in support of Jaramillo’s proposal saying “low-road contractors regularly underbid honest employers by not paying their workers in accordance with established wage & hour laws.” Present at the meeting were also Revere workers, members of the North Atlantic Council of Carpenters who spoke in support. Josh Colon, a member of the union, said that “employers that commit wage theft not only evade payroll taxes and insurance premiums in Massachusetts, misclassification led to a revenue shortfall of $40-million [in Massachusetts] in 2019.
Present was also Salem City Councilor Jeff Cohen who drove to Revere to testify at the subcommittee meeting later opined “too often in our society, businesses make up for losses and build on the backs of their employees and those that play by the rules are disadvantaged by those who don’t. Today, Revere’s Council told those who work there that they matter, that victimizing workers won’t be tolerated.” During his testimony he affirmed that should Revere adopt this ordinance it would be one of the strongest worker protections in the state for workers and their salaries.
The ordinance received a unanimous favorable report from the subcommittee which is made up of Councillors Argenzio, the chair of the subcommittee, Guarino-Sawaya, Haas, Kelley, and McKenna and was later voted on unanimously by the whole council.
The ordinance would create a reporting process for workers and create a mechanism by which the city is working with the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) to go after bad actors. Further, it would allow the city to hold those same bad actors accountable should the AGO or the State Department of Labor (DOL) find that someone has committed wage theft against a worker.
