Wage theft, often perpetrated by subcontractors hired out by construction companies to avoid accountability, permeates every sector of the construction industry.
“I am a daughter of a construction worker and independent contractor! I grew up in a home where sometimes we had what we needed, but many times we did not,” Monica Bravo said through a megaphone. She was perched atop a clunky pickup truck adorned with banners and picket signs in Minneapolis, outside of a construction site owned by Yellow Tree, a real estate developer. A Midwestern summer sun blazed over her head as traffic hummed in the background.
Bravo, the executive director of the West Side Community Organization, alongside a coalition of workers’ rights advocates, union organizers, and general laborers, was there to protest poor working conditions within the construction industry. Their caravan would soon make its way into the heart of downtown Minneapolis to protest other build sites where blocky, five-on-one condominiums were under construction.
Bravo accused the firm, alongside a slew of other Minnesota real estate companies, of ignoring chronic concerns over safety, sexual harassment—and, most urgently, rampant wage theft.
“That was five decades ago,” Bravo continued. “And we have families today still facing wage theft while the construction industry is booming with millionaires and multimillionaires—all at the expense of exploiting the families that are working for them.”
Bravo was not exaggerating. The...
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