Employer of Illegal Worker Cited

 

The owners of North Star Concrete in Farmingville, N.Y. have been cited by Suffolk County officials for hiring a worker who could verify his legal working status. Photo by: In These Times

Since Suffolk legislators enacted a law requiring county contractors to verify their employees are of legal working status in 2006, only one business has been fined, according to Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy.

North Star Concrete, which lists a Farmingville, N.Y. post office box on its Web site, was fined $9,500 in November after the company could not produce legal employment documents for one of its employees working at the county's fire academy, Levy said.

Levy said the county's Labor Department conducted surprise immigration inspections on its contractors during 2007. Only North Star had any violations, proving the law a success, he said. The measure affects 6,000 of Suffolk's 10,000 contracts, including those that are fully county-funded and all public works contracts.

"It was a very pleasant finding," he said.

But others were less certain about the law's impact.

Ricardo Montano (D-Central Islip), an opponent of both the contractor law and of a new proposal to extend the law, said Levy is trumpeting the law as a success even though he has not found any wrongdoing.