HAMDEN, Conn — Connecticut workers within the migrant community along with advocates gathered outside the state's Department of Labor (CTDOL) office in Hamden Thursday evening to call for justice.
John Lugo is the director of New Haven’s Unidad Latina En Accion. He said 800 labor cases have gone untouched by the CTDOL.
Lugo said many of the workers who stood alongside him Thursday in the hot summer heat are out thousands of dollars because of unpaid wages.
Lina Segura, along with her husband, worked for three months in a New Haven restaurant without getting paid. Of the $18,000 she was owed, she said the DOL handled her case without speaking with her and that she received a check in the mail for only 20% of what she was owed and then closed her case. She wants to know what happened to the rest of the money she is owed.
Other workers said they never had their cases looked at. Their demands include opening up the cases they say have been ignored or dismissed, Gov. Ned Lamont allocating more money to the DOL, and Wage and Workplace Standards Division Director Thomas Wydra stepping down.
The department, however, said that with the thousands of complaint cases they get, they are "triaged for urgent health and safety considerations and wait in line for an investigator."
The DOL said they investigate "every single complaint that comes into the Wage and Workplace Division" and would welcome additional funding. They said, "While we recognize that ULA is concerned with wage cases, it’s important to note that the division has a broad mandate, including responding to urgent workplace health and safety situations."
"There are just under 2,000 cases in the CTDOL Wage and Workplace pipeline; more than 800 of those are waiting to be assigned to an investigator, and more than 1,000 are somewhere in the investigation process," the statement continued.
As for the calls for the division director to step down, the DOL said, "We are very disappointed that ULA would even make that suggestion. CTDOL has worked with ULA for years, especially on domestic worker protections, and they know how hard CTDOL has advocated for additional wage and workplace division staffing."
They said they are working on clearing the backlog and encourage ULA to join them.
CTDOL said they encourage all workers who believe they are the victims of wage or workplace violations to file a complaint. While the unit is in high demand, last year, they recovered more than $2.4 million in back wages for workers.
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Alexa Farrell is a multimedia journalist for FOX61 News. She can be reached at AFarrell@fox61.com. Follow her on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
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