I Like the Day Laborer Clinic!

Stamford Advocate article: Group marks a year of assisting day laborers
By Stephen P. Clark 6/17/2008

STAMFORD - A group that helps day laborers collect unpaid wages is celebrating its first anniversary this week.

The Stamford Day Laborer Wage Clinic was created to provide free legal assistance to low-income day laborers and other workers who claim employers denied them earned wages.

The clinic, a project of Connecticut Legal Services, aims to help laborers overcome their fears and enforce their employment rights.

"This project has become very important for the community of day laborers in Stamford," clinic co-founder and Legal Services attorney Megan McLeod said in a statement. "By focusing on education, we hope to empower day laborers, making them less fearful of the system and more likely to challenge their employers' employment practices."

McCarter & English LLP is sponsoring the reception for volunteers, which will be held 6 to 8 p.m tomorrow at SBC Restaurant and Brewery on Summer Street.

Ninety-four volunteers - 36 attorneys, 20 paralegals and law students, and 38 residents - work at the clinic.

It "provides some of the most vulnerable members of our community with an opportunity to achieve justice," McCarter & English attorney and Legal Services board member Amy Haberman said in a statement.

McLeod conceived the idea for the clinic in 2006 after she helped two day laborers collect $7,000 in back wages and more laborers started visiting her for help.

One month before opening the clinic, McLeod and another Legal Services attorney, Jennifer Mellon,
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won a temporary injunction in U.S. District Court against Dorian Ambrosi, owner of Fambro Home Repair, for threatening and harassing two day laborers when they tried to collect their wages for 100 hours of work.

In its first year, the clinic helped 176 day laborers and other workers collect more than $45,000 in unpaid wages, with an additional $56,000 in outstanding judgments and settlements.

The biggest judgment came in October for $44,000 against Ambrosi. But the clinic attorneys have not been able to collect the money.

The clinic is open 6 to 8 p.m. the second and fourth Wednesday of each month at the Connecticut Legal Services Stamford office, 20 Summer St.

The clinic moved there in September after leaving the original office in St. Mary's Church on Elm Street.

Clinic co-founder and Legal Services attorney Nadine Nevins said it moved because the church wasn't comfortable or safe - the clinic operated on different floors that required volunteers and laborers to use the stairs often. The number of day laborers did not decrease since the move, she said.

"A few years from now, we hope most employers will realize that they cannot exploit immigrant day laborers and get away with it," Nevins said.

In the next year, the clinic wants to represent more female laborers who are not being paid for cleaning houses or providing day care, she said.

"We haven't reached that population," Nevins said.