NYC Garment Factory Nabbed For Wage and Hour Violations

States Stepping Up Enforcement — NY Nabs Garment Factory for $3 Million

Posted on 31-Aug-08 by The Timekeeper

Anybody who doubts the state of New York is stepping up labor law enforcement should take a moment or two to peruse this press release.

Apparently, the NY DOL discovered that Jin Shun Incorporated, a garment contractor located in Long Island City, and its owners Jikai Lin and Zhang Yun Chen, had cheated over 100 workers out of nearly $3 million in unpaid wages and overtime. Operating under the name Venture 47 prior to 2005, the company may have cheated even more employees out of $2.5 million more. As of this writing, the company is reportedly operating under the name Garlee NY Inc.

OK, so yeah, yeah, yeah, another garment-making sweatshop in New York City. We’ve heard that story before. But what makes this story notable is the lengths to which the company went to conceal the violations.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of a company that forced workers to clock in to two different sets of timecards in order to hide the number of hours the employees are actually working. In this case, the workers would clock in on one set of cards Monday through Wednesday and another set for the latter half of the week. Only one set of cards would be furnished to labor investigators, making it appear the employees were only working 30 to 40 hours a week.

In fact, they were working 12-hour shifts, six to seven days a week. Worse, instead of being paid hourly, they were paid piecework. As a result, the employees weren’t even paid minimum wage, much less the overtime they were owed. Investigators determined each employee would have to be able to complete an entire garment start to finish in less than a minute in order to reconcile production records with the time cards turned in. (I dunno if you’ve ever tried sewing clothes, but trust me when I tell you that’s really, really unlikely…)

Another commonly-used tactic employed by the sweatshop was to change names frequently in response to DOL investigations — as you might have figured out from the three names already listed.

But what really takes this case over the top when compared to your standard NYC sweatshop story was the cheat sheets — lists of questions and suggested answers the company used to coach employees — the ones they were cheating — to lie to the investigators who were trying to get those same employees the pay they deserved. For instance, they told employees to say they were paid hourly, they were making at least $7.75 an hour and that they were paid time-and-a-half for all hours worked over 40 per week.

Not surprisingly, the NY state DOL is referring the case to the Queens District Attorney’s office to determine if criminal charges can be filed.