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City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. is calling on community leaders throughout the City to help ensure that immigrants and other working people know about their rights to fair wages and benefits that are required by New York’s prevailing wage and living wage laws.

This week, Thompson notified the leaders of hundreds of community, immigrant and worker advocacy groups that he needs their help to make sure that employees are paid their lawful wages when working on New York City government construction contracts, city-owned building service contracts, and municipal contracts that provide services such as security, home health care and day care.

“While most municipal contractors are responsible and law-abiding, too many unscrupulous contractors exploit hardworking New Yorkers by skirting prevailing and living wage laws,” Thompson said. “We are aiming to develop community-based partnerships to raise awareness in immigrant communities about prevailing and living wage laws.”

The Comptroller’s new “Immigrant Prevailing Wage and Living Wage Outreach Partnership” will amplify his outreach to workers so they aren’t financially victimized.

“Many cheated workers are newly arrived immigrants who encounter language barriers and may be too intimidated to step forward and file complaints against their employers,” Thompson said.  He noted that workers can submit labor law complaints to the Comptroller regardless of their immigration status.

Thompson has issued multi-lingual flyers’ to educate workers such as carpenters, home attendants, laborers, and security guards.  Information is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Polish, Russian, Urdu and Portuguese. Further, members of the Comptroller’s staff will visit associations throughout the City to heighten awareness about the law.

The Comptroller enforces New York State laws that require private sector contractors doing public work to pay their employees the same wage that prevails in the trade where the public work is being done. The Comptroller’s Bureau of Labor Law has helped thousands of workers recover wages owed to them by municipal contractors who failed to comply with the law. In the process, the office has helped keep the playing field level for competitive bidding on City construction projects.

In February, Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. announced that his office reached a settlement in which Netexit, Inc./Expanets paid nearly $1.5 million to 16 employees who were underpaid for electrical work at Human Resources Administration sites throughout the City. The $1.5 million represented the largest prevailing wage settlement reached by the Comptroller’s Office during Thompson’s tenure in office.

Over nearly five years, Thompson’s Bureau of Labor Law has resolved 718 prevailing and living wage cases and collected more than $8,191,046 in underpayments and more than $582,325 in penalty fines. From January to October 2006 alone, the Bureau collected $3,790,006 in underpayments and $211,617 in penalties.

Additionally, Thompson since taking office has debarred 20 contractors from doing business with the City as a result of labor law violations.

“Prevailing and living wage laws are about helping hardworking people and creating a better New York for all of us,” Thompson said.

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