The Greater Boston area has perhaps one of the largest concentrations of Brazilian immigrants in the United States today.  As this population grows – especially ones who are new to this country, limited in English proficiency, and unaware of their rights – the problem of labor law violations that affect them grows.  We work with Brazilians who regularly suffer exploitation at the hands of their employers, including refusal to pay overtime and other wage violations, unsafe workplaces, and discrimination.

Since most of our constituents are low-wage workers, and many work in high-risk industries such as construction, cleaning, and food services, much of our work is focused on wage exploitation and workplace safety.  Another primary focus of our work in education and organizing is promoting labor rights.

Immigrants are disproportionately represented in high-risk industries such as construction.  Kitchen work and janitorial work, where many Brazilians are employed, also rate surprisingly high as hazardous.  Foreign-born workers, especially recent immigrants are often inadequately trained and protected against workplace injury.  Fear of deportation and language barriers also add to the vulnerability of immigrants to workplace hazards.

Non-payment or underpayment of wages is another serious issue for immigrant workers.  This is a growing problem in Massachusetts affecting immigrant and other low-income workers.  Immigrants are particularly at risk, due to fear of government agencies and to language barriers.   Compounding these issues are inadequate sanctions to deter employers (it is more profitable to break the law and risk having to pay back wages), and a current lack of enforcement capacity on the part of state government. 

 We are working to address these issues on several levels.  Our advice, support, and assistance in individual cases are important, but we can only directly assist in a small fraction of the cases that come to us, and even these are only a small fraction of the violations that occur.  Our Workers’ Rights Project therefore focuses on organizing Brazilians to educate one another, show their support for protective legislation, and work with other immigrant communities on issues of common concern.  We also work to identify cases with potentially broad impact through litigation: for example, cases that might be the basis of class-action lawsuits that would affect entire industries or a wide range of workers.  Aside from the legal impact of such cases, the publicity has the potential to empower and educate workers, and give pause to exploitative employers.  More importantly, involvement in a class-action suit is a form of hands-on leadership development for the members of the group, who might be potential leaders of others.

 Our overarching goal is to not only change employer practices so that all immigrant workers are treated fairly and according to the standards of existing labor laws, but also to change those laws to better protect workers and to increase the poewr of collective bargaining. To that end, the BIC is developing strategies to impact industries as a whole and employers as a group.  We want our work to demonstrate both to immigrant workers and their employers that labor standards are enforceable for all employers and employees regardless of language barriers or the immigration status of workers.  Some of our recent achievements include:

 • Identifying a clear pattern of abuse of immigrant workers by the cleaning franchise industry (Many immigrant families invested several years of savings in the hopes of steady employment for the immediate family, only to lose their investment upon paying for a franchise.) and targeting it.  We are currently supporting class-action suits: 3 in progress and 1 in preparation.  All of these suits name Brazilian workers in Massachusetts as their lead plaintiffs, but include immigrants from Africa and other parts of Latin America as well; 2 of the ones currently in progress are national in their scope.