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News :: Labor |
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Illegally In The U.S., And Never A Day Off At Wal-Mart |
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by Steven Greenhouse
(No verified email address) |
05 Nov 2003
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Who's cleaning the local Walmarts and Sam's Club? Wonder if Walmart will "come clean" about that? |
hey came from Russia, Poland and Lithuania, and their tales of washing and waxing Wal-Mart's floors for seven nights a week sound much like Pavel's.
Last February, Pavel responded to an intriguing Web site that boasted of cleaning jobs in the United States paying four times what he was earning as a restaurant manager in the Czech Republic. He flew from Prague to New York on a tourist visa and took a bus to Lynchburg, Va., where a subcontractor delivered him to a giant Wal-Mart.
Pavel immediately began on the midnight shift and said he soon learned that he would never receive a night off. He said he worked every night for the next eight months. In this way, Pavel, who refused to give his last name, became one pawn among hundreds employed by subcontractors that clean Wal-Mart stores across the nation, paying many workers off the books.
Pavel's unhappy stay in the United States ended with a shock when federal agents raided 60 Wal-Marts on Oct. 23 and arrested him and 250 other janitors as being illegal immigrants. Yesterday, the company acknowledged that it had received a target letter from federal prosecutors accusing it of violating immigration laws and saying that Wal-Mart faced a grand jury investigation.
The 21-state raid last month exposed an unseemly secret about Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer: Hundreds of illegal immigrants worked at its stores, and its subcontractors appear to have violated overtime, Social Security and workers' compensation laws.
Company officials deny having known that illegal immigrants worked in their stores, saying they required their cleaning contractors to use only legal workers.
But two federal law enforcement officials said in interviews that Wal-Mart executives must have known about the immigration violations because federal agents rounded up 102 illegal immigrant janitors at Wal-Marts in 1998 and 2001. In the October raid, federal agents searched the office of an executive at Wal-Mart's headquarters, carting away boxes of papers. Federal officials said prosecutors had wiretaps and recordings of conversations between Wal-Mart officials and subcontractors.
The use of illegal workers appeared to benefit Wal-Mart, its shareholders and managers by minimizing the company's costs, and it benefited consumers by helping hold down Wal-Mart's prices. Cleaning contractors profited, and thousands of foreign workers were able to earn more than they could back home.
But the system also had its costs — janitors said they were forced to work seven days a week, were not paid overtime and often endured harsh conditions. Foreigners got jobs that Americans might have wanted. And taxpayers sometimes ended up paying for the illegal workers' emergency health care or their children's education in American schools.
"We Czechs are willing to sacrifice and work hard, but we definitely weren't earning enough money," said Pavel, 33, in a telephone interview from the Czech Embassy before he was deported last Friday. He said he received $380 in cash for his 56-hour workweeks. That came to $6.79 an hour, and he did not receive time-and-a-half for overtime.
In interviews, federal law enforcement officials, cleaning contractors, industry experts and seven illegal immigrant cleaners at Wal-Mart, including Pavel, said subcontracting allowed Wal-Mart to benefit while enabling it to deny responsibility.
Wal-Mart officials said it made sense to contract out the cleaning work because that enabled store managers to concentrate on what they do best, operating stores that provide low-cost merchandise. Wal-Mart uses about 100 contractors to clean nearly 1,000 of its stores.
Several industry executives said the questionable contractors made it hard for legitimate operators to bid low enough to win contracts at Wal-Mart.
"When you don't pay taxes, don't pay Social Security and don't pay workers' comp, you have a 40 percent cost advantage," said Lilia Garcia, executive director of the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund, a group financed by California cleaning contractors to police fly-by-night competitors. "It makes it hard for companies that follow the rules."
After the arrests, Wal-Mart, which had $245 billion in revenues last year, said it was beginning a review to ensure that no illegal immigrants worked in its 3,470 American stores.
"We take every action that we can to make sure our workers are legal workers, and in this case, be assured we will take whatever corrective actions are necessary," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark.
He said of the target letter, "The notification gives us time to provide the attorney general's office information that supports our position."
Many people, from janitors to federal investigators, said Wal-Mart store managers and officials at headquarters knew about widespread use of cleaners who are illegal immigrants.
"The chief manager of our store knew what was going on," Pavel said. "He knew that we were illegal."
Federal law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Wal-Mart executives must have known about the use of illegal immigrants partly because 13 Wal-Mart cleaning subcontractors pleaded guilty to illegal hiring practices several years ago.
One of the 13 was Miriam Klackova Facemyer, 30, president of Spartak Cleaning, who admitted two years ago in federal court in Virginia to employing illegal immigrants. Ms. Facemyer, a native of Slovakia living in Richmond, employed more than 110 immigrants, most from Eastern Europe, to clean Wal-Marts and other stores.
Wal-Mart is not the only retailer to use questionable cleaning contractors. Hundreds of Mexican immigrants have sued three California supermarket chains, charging them with hiring contractors that never gave a night off, did not pay overtime and often paid less than the minimum wage.
Daniel Kuchar, a 25-year-old Czech engineering student, said he worked every night except Christmas in his 12 months cleaning for two Wal-Mart competitors, Kmart and Target, in Northern Virginia. The companies have policies prohibiting contractors from hiring illegal immigrants. Last March, he won a $7,278 judgment in state court against his contractor, Promaster Cleaning Service, for failing to pay him time-and-a-half for overtime.
"Everybody goes to the United States for the money," said Mr. Kuchar, who entered on a tourist visa and has returned to his Czech village.
One subcontractor, Stanislaw Kostek, whose company, CMS Cleaning, cleaned more than a dozen Wal-Marts in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, acknowledged that he had hired illegal immigrants.
"It's a degrading job; very few people want to do it even though the salary is at least $2 above the minimum wage" of $5.15 an hour, Mr. Kostek said. "But there are workers who want to do the job."
Those workers, he said, come from not just Eastern Europe but also Mexico, Mongolia, Uzbekistan and other distant lands. Some take the jobs hoping they will be the first step in their climb to the American dream, while others view it as a way to earn cash before returning home.
Mr. Kostek, a native of Poland, said he quit the business after paying a $10,000 civil penalty last June in pleading guilty to federal charges of employing illegal immigrants.
Victor Zavala Jr., who cleaned Wal-Marts in New Jersey seven nights a week, explained the lure of the job.
"When I talk on the phone to friends in Mexico, they ask me how the pay is, and I say, `We're getting $350 a week,' " said Mr. Zavala, a native of Mexico City who was rounded up in the Oct. 23 raid. "They say, `Wow, in Mexico we're earning 300 pesos a week.' That's just $30 a week. So compared with Mexico, it's good money."
Mr. Zavala said it was unjust to deport immigrants who worked hard and well. "We were proud of what we were doing," he said. "Every morning we looked back at the floors, and they looked real shiny. I don't want to get too emotional, but do you think we want to go back to our country and earn just $30 a week?"
One night, he recalled, a co-worker sliced his hand open on a floor-scraping blade and was rushed to a hospital in Red Bank. He had problems paying the $800 bill because his job did not provide health insurance and his employer shunned the workers' compensation system. The hospital swallowed the cost.
Reached by telephone, Ken Clancy, president of Facility Solutions, which employed Mr. Zavala, would not comment.
Mr. Kostek described an elaborate network of contractors that served Wal-Mart. There was a contractor above him, he said, that had perhaps 100 stores. This contractor then made individual subcontractors responsible for stores, usually between 5 and 20.
Wal-Mart paid the contractor $10 an hour per worker, Mr. Kostek said, the contractor paid subcontractors $9 an hour per worker and subcontractors paid their employees $8 an hour — although many workers said they received less than $7. Mr. Kostek said he had to pay for equipment, chemicals and liability insurance.
He did not pay some required taxes. "How do you pay workers' comp if you're making $1 an hour and you have to cover all expenses?" he said. "And no, I wasn't paying Social Security either."
Mr. Kostek would not name the contractor above him, and federal prosecutors and Wal-Mart executives refused to name Wal-Mart's cleaning contractors and subcontractors.
Industry experts and janitors said the contractors and subcontractors appeared to play a shell game, continually closing down, filing for bankruptcy and reincorporating under different names. Some closed without paying workers their last month's pay. Some insisted on a $2,000 finder's fee for providing foreigners with jobs.
"There is a whole Mafia-like structure," said Richard Krpac, chief counsel for the Czech Embassy. "They advertise on all these Web sites, and they try to erase all of people's doubts about it. If you're without work for two or three years, and you're trying to take anything, you may easily fall prey."
Denis, who refused to give his last name, said he got a medical degree in Russia before taking a job at a Wal-Mart in Lexington, Va. He said the store manager knew that illegal immigrants were cleaning the floors.
"It's obvious," he said. "They knew the whole crew consists of foreigners who don't speak English."
Denis said it was exhausting to work seven nights a week, with just a 15-minute break. "There were no benefits, no health insurance, no nothing," he said.
Robert, a Czech who runs a Web site to attract Eastern Europeans to janitorial work, said using foreign cleaners was good for Wal-Mart and for American consumers.
"No American wants to do this job," he said. "If they hired Americans, it would take 10 of them to do the work done by five Czechs. This helps Wal-Mart keep its prices low."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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