The City Council’s Legislative Affairs Committee got a tutorial on wage theft on Monday, March 9, from the retired Salem councilor who wrote that city’s ordinance, two weeks before the Everett council voted to enroll its own version.
Jeff Cohen, “two months retired as a Salem City Councilor,” said the ordinance he wrote in 2023 passed 11-0 in Salem and was adopted word for word in Revere in November. Wage theft “isn’t just a server not getting paid overtime,” he said. “It’s misclassification. It is cash. It is 1099 when someone should be an employee.” He said it is “way more prevalent in the trades” and that on a big construction site, “the sub that has wage theft, 100 percent of the time, a nonunion sub.” The ordinance does not make the city an enforcer. It requires contractors and license holders to certify they have not been found liable for wage theft, lets the city end a contract, a tax break or a license if they lied, and sets up anonymous reporting that is forwarded to the attorney general. He described a Salem job where six masons were paid as laborers “and in six weeks denied a $100,000.” After the city raised a stop-work order, “within four days, the general contractor came up with the money.” He said the restaurant chain Casa Tequila was fined $900,000 by the federal government and kept operating for three years. He also warned that wage theft “can include physical sexual assault, even human trafficking.”
Councilor Stephanie Martins, the lead sponsor, listed the 13 Massachusetts communities with ordinances: Amherst, Boston, Cambridge, Chicopee, Easthampton, Lowell, Lynn, Northampton, Revere, Salem, Somerville, Springfield and Worcester. She said she has heard of Everett restaurants recruiting workers abroad who “had to work unpaid” to repay their passage, “and that’s also wage theft.” The ordinance requires bidders to disclose wage theft judgments from the previous five years, maintain workers’ injury insurance, keep daily sign-in logs on city construction jobs and submit monthly certified payroll. City Solicitor Jaclyn Munson, who worked on the same ordinance in Boston, said the city can be “a vehicle for information” to the attorney general but cannot take complaints in her office, which would be “a licensure risk for me.” Martins moved the reporting duty to the chief procurement officer, who would create an online complaint form and a notice for every workplace. Councilor Anthony DiPierro, from the insurance world, described contractors who 1099 their crews to dodge payroll tax and workers’ compensation. Chair Michael Marchese asked who would police job sites; Martins said no one: “We’re opening up a channel for reporting.” The committee kept the ordinance until a clean draft and sent it to the March 23 council meeting with a favorable recommendation, where it was enrolled 9-1.
Three minutes, one list
The committee backed Councilor Katy Rogers’ rule change merging agenda and non-agenda public comment into one three-minute slot. She said a woman who came to speak about the snow emergency “had to wait for about two hours until the end of the meeting,” and that the school committee already uses three minutes. “It should just be freedom of speech, three minutes, speak whether it’s agenda or non agenda.” The council adopted it March 23.
Also recommended: Christopher Snook, a union member from DiPierro’s ward, as labor representative on the Everett Housing Authority board, and Margaret Leaver, a public housing resident, as tenant representative. The vote on Snook drew one audible “no” in the room.
