Working Together to Protect Working People

By Jane Regan

Over the past four years, more than $200,000 has been stolen from workers by firms working in or located in Somerville, according to the state attorney general’s office. The Herb Chambers company alone was fined over $116,000 in 2018.

It happens every day and every month, labor experts say.

A few years back protesters organized by Centro Presente and other groups picketed the Diva restaurant in Davis for months before finally paying its workers tens of thousands in back wages, activist Mary Jo Connelly remembered.

“These are the parents of our kids’ classmates, these are our neighbors, we want to stand up with them,” Connolly said in an interview in Davis Square.

Local unions, worker and immigrant advocate groups, city councilors and long-time activists are trying to make it tougher for companies to exploit its laborers with a stronger “wage theft” prevention ordinance and also perhaps a workers center.

Learn more about it and hear from your neighbors in the Somerville Neighborhood News video and read the story online at somervillemedia/org/snn.