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Unregulated Work in the Global City
Unregulated Work in the Global City
was motivated by a simple premise: the many laws on the books to
protect the working poor mean little if they are not enforced. Over
three years of intensive research, the Brennan Center documented a city
where jobs pay less than the minimum wage, and sometimes nothing at
all; where employers do not pay overtime for 60-hour weeks, and deny
meal breaks that are required by law; where vital health and safety
regulations are routinely ignored, even after injuries occur; and where
workers are subject to blatant discrimination, and retaliated against
for speaking up or trying to organize.
Our research suggests
that unregulated work is not confined to isolated, short-lived cases of
exploitation at the fringe of the city’s economy. Instead, the report
finds that the systematic violation of federal, state and local law is
threatening to become a way of doing business in major low-wage
industries. It identifies the types of laws that employers are
violating, the business strategies that result in violations, the
workers who are most affected, and the policy changes that are needed
to renew the promise of workplace protections. The report focuses on
New York City, but we are convinced that the conditions it describes
exist throughout the American economy.
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I have just skimmed through the construction section and it is on the money , the entire publication is available in PDF form on the site or you can request a hard copy via e-mail . A huge thanks to Ed Ott (chairman NYC Central Labor Council) for pointing this out to us and to the researchers at NYU who put this report together .
