More Workers Wait for Paychecks, More Companies Unable to Pay
Tino Calabria’s former employer owes him $25,000 in unpaid wages, and he hasn’t seen a dime since being laid off New Year’s Eve. The former vice president of operations for ImaginAsian Entertainment is now one of more than a dozen workers suing the company for past pay.
Calabria and his colleagues are not alone. As companies struggle amid the country’s worst-post World War II recession, government agencies and lawyers have been inundated with complaints from workers about not being paid, Newsday reports.
“These types of egregious violations are worse now than we’ve ever seen and that includes people not being paid at all,” Irv Miljoner, head of the Long Island Office of the U.S. Labor Department, told Newsday.
In January, New York officials said they recovered $24.6 million owed to 17,000 workers underpaid or not paid at all, Newsday reports. But, not all workers are so lucky.
Peter Contini, a Garden City, N.Y., attorney who represents four executives of Windswept Environmental Group of Holtsville and its subsidiary, Trade-Winds Environmental Restoration, a company that helped with the cleanup at Ground Zero after the Sept. 11 attack, is doubtful his clients and other employees will recover any money from the now-defunct company, which liquidated after defaulting on a nearly $6 million in loans.
“I hold out very little hope,” he said.
