Immigrant Workers Sue Md. Employer

Hector Granados, Pedro Clavjio and Miguel Moya, from left, worked at a Department of Justice building for Hann & Hann, which they sued. (By Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)
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She and other attorneys will seek the company's employment records to try to determine how many laborers were not paid the time-and-a-half they were entitled to for working overtime, and how many were not paid for work they did, Varela said.

The four named plaintiffs and almost all of the other workers who were allegedly exploited by the company are Latino immigrants, Varela said.

Each of the four named plaintiffs is a legal resident of the United States, Varela said. She said she did not know the immigration status of the other workers. Under federal labor law, she said, immigration status is not relevant to whether a worker's rights have been violated.

In an opinion published this January, Susan K. Gauvey, a U.S. magistrate judge in Maryland, cited a previous opinion that said allowing employers to exploit undocumented workers would create an economic incentive for employers to hire such workers and underpay them.

Exploitation of immigrant workers is common, workers and their advocates said. In recent years, some Washington area workers have started fighting back through the courts.

Last August, 46 Latino laborers in suburban Maryland received checks totaling $100,000 in a partial settlement of a federal class-action lawsuit against a contractor and subcontractor that had hired them to do arduous cleanup work in Louisiana and Mississippi.

The workers said they were promised good living conditions, several months work and $10 an hour in wages. Instead, several said, they were crammed into tiny apartments, received only a few weeks work and were not paid for some or all of their labor.

In February 2007, the Lawyers' Committee filed a federal lawsuit in Greenbelt alleging that a Frederick County company that paints luxury condominiums in the District defrauded Latino immigrant workers who routinely worked 60 or more hours a week by failing to pay them overtime. That lawsuit is pending.