When Evelyn began work at New Bedford, Massachusetts, seafood processing center Marder Trawling, she learned of an unusual condition of employment: She’d need to quietly pay her manager $100 per week for the privilege of working, she said. “I didn’t have work, and I have kids,” she said. “So I told him, ‘All right,’ just to have a job.
“There were times I didn’t have money for rent, bills, or food for my kids,” she told Labor Notes, but her manager was happy to oblige: she could skip a week’s payment, and owe $200 the next week.
Petronila, another former Marder worker, described a similar experience. “You work hard, you leave your kids with someone to go to work, just to have this man take money from us,” she said. “No one deserves to be treated this way.”
Evelyn and Petronila requested that their full names not be used for fear of blacklisting.
After talking about their experiences with New Bedford’s Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores (Workers’ Community Center), workers filed a class action in October against Marder, the staffing agency through which they were hired (Workforce Unlimited), and their former manager Francisco Ixcotoyac Dionicio, who they claim imposed the weekly payments. Lawyers representing the workers estimate that more than half a million dollars were extorted from them between January 1, 2021, and May 27, 2025.
“[Ixcotoyac] categorically denies forcing employees to pay him any amount to keep their jobs at Marder Trawling,” the manager’s lawyer said in...
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