A proposed city ordinance is the most recent in a decades-long string of attempts to fight wage theft in New Haven. But little progress on the ordinance’s implementation raises the question of why the issue still has not been addressed.
Staff Reporter
Ariela Lopez, Contributing Photographer
Bella Vazquez prides herself on being a good judge of character. So when her employer of six months stopped paying her weekly wages in the spring of 2022, citing temporary financial difficulties, she felt confident that he would eventually square up with her.
“I believed him until the last moment,” Vazquez confessed in Spanish. “The expression he had, the way he spoke — I said to myself, ‘I have also suffered hardships, so why don’t I support him? I know that, in the end, he will repay me.’”
The employer was a New Haven-based contractor who hired Vazquez and two dozen other construction workers to renovate a building in September 2021. Vazquez noted that most of the contractor’s employees, herself included, were undocumented immigrants struggling to stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the contractor did not compensate them for working overtime and occasionally paid their salaries late, she described him as a kind employer who always offered his workers a smile and a free coffee. “There was no work [during the pandemic],” Vazquez said in Spanish. “So, the people put up with it.”
Work on the construction project concluded in April 2022, leaving Vasquez without a job. Neither...
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