NYC NOW - August 22, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

Police have arrested a woman who allegedly crashed into seven pedestrians in Midtown over the weekend. Plus, New York City wants to add more space for pedestrians and cyclists on Broadway, north of Union Square. And a new report reveals that employers in New York State stole roughly $126 million in wages from workers between 2017 and 2021. But the State Department of Labor has not had much success recovering the money.

NYC now. Welcome to NYC now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Tuesday, August 22nd. Here's the midday news from Lance Lucky. Police have arrested a woman who they say crashed into seven pedestrians in a midtown crosswalk Sunday night. 29-year-old Imani Lucas of New Jersey faces multiple charges, including attempted murder and assault. Her mother told WNYC she thinks her daughter was having a severe mental health episode. Police say Lucas drove her car into pedestrians at West 36th Street and 6th Avenue. Just before midnight Sunday, no one was seriously injured.

A wallaby seized by the NYPD last week has found a home at a Long Island animal shelter, and workers there say they expect more marsupials soon. A Long Island pet store has been selling wallabies and kangaroos, and now community groups in Coney Island say people have been selling encounters with the exotic animals. Lori Ketchum is director of Save the Animals Rescue Foundation. Since we think there's going to be kind of an on-fluck of wallabies coming down the road, we're going to build a nice enclosure for this one and let it live with us.

Wallabies are among the many animals not allowed to be owned in New York City, but it is legal elsewhere in New York and in neighboring states to own exotic creatures. The city is looking to add more space for pedestrians and cyclists on Broadway, north of Union Square. So the Department of Transportation has begun public outreach sessions for a planned redesign of Broadway between 17th and 21st streets. One of those sessions seeking New Yorkers input happened yesterday at Broadway and 20th. Others will happen tomorrow. And on Friday, with more outreach happening before the end of the year. If you want more details on how you can weigh in, visit our news website, Gothamist.

74 degrees now, sunny and around 80 this afternoon. It'll be rather windy with some Gus near 30 miles per hour, clear and cool tonight around 6. I'm Carrie Nolan. The New York State Department of Labor has found that employers stole roughly $126 million in wages from workers in the state between 2017 and 2021. But despite the agency's success substantiating claims of wage theft, the department has not had much success recovering the money. A recent analysis by ProPublica and documented, fines nearly 63% or about $79 million of those stolen wages have not been recovered. Reporter Marcus Baram joins us now to discuss why. Marcus, thank you for coming on.

Thank you for having me, Carrie. Appreciate it. Tell us about your investigation. How did you get this data? And what did you find? We had reached out to the Department of Labor to get information on wage theft violations. And they were resistant initially. And so it ended up being a back and forth through the third.

FOIA process, and then eventually we got this massive treasure trove of wage theft violations throughout the state from 2017 through the end of 2021. And so through that, we kind of did our analysis, and it stood out to us that, you know, so little was recovered. Why has it been so hard for the Department of Labor to recover back pay for workers? I mean, number one, I think they are understaffed and underresourced. They used to have back in the 60s, I think, over 300 employees, and now they're down to about 129. And they don't really have the legal tools that some other states and cities have to pursue violators to their, you know, credit. They do the best they can what they have, but they're burdened with a huge backlog of

cases. And it's very difficult to sometimes collect money in these cases. You have these employers where companies go dark, they move around the corner, they change owners, and it can be very difficult to actually get the money from employers who are unscrupulous like that. Now, you said a majority of the outstanding back pay cases came from employers in New York City. You've also said that you encountered some repeat offenders. Yes. Yeah, there are actually quite a few dozen repeat offenders, including a construction company called Raymond Construction that had done a lot of work around the city and doesn't really appear to be very active right now, but they had four cases, four separate cases of

wage theft within that period. And that's one thing that kept coming up again and again in our investigation is that a lot of the employers don't really take it seriously. I mean, the Economic Policy Institute says that there's at least a billion dollars in wage thefts happening in New York. every year. So only a sliver of that is reported or complained about. You spoke to former Department of Labor employees and other experts who expressed their frustration with the agency's chronic inability to recover back pain. Now, aside from beefing up staffing, what do they say needs to happen for the agency to improve its wage recovery rate? A key thing that's missing right now is a proper collections unit. Obviously, it's one thing to

investigate and to determine that an employer committed wage theft, but in a way, the most crucial part is recovering the money for these poor workers, most of whom work in low-wage sectors, like restaurant work, construction work. And so to have a proper collections unit that is tasked with finding assets, has the skills to pursue recall Katrina employers who do not respond, and to do that work takes a specialized team. And they lack a really big, beefed-up collections unit to pursue that work. And another key thing that keeps bringing brought up is the lack of sort of legal tools, whereas in other states, employees have the right to pursue liens against employers who treated them. Also, employers, they can put up bonds, which can be

used to pay unpaid wages. And in other places, the prosecutors get involved much more directly, like in Massachusetts. Wages enough enforcement is actually run by the Attorney General's office. Marcus Baram is a reporter for ProPublica and documented. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcast.

We'll be back this evening.