Robert McCreanor – RI Future

August 15, 2016August 26, 2016

Leader DeSimone’s legal skills help wage thief

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House Majority Leader John DeSimone is also a lawyer and one of his clients is Chung Cho, a restaurant owner who was fined for wage theft in Connecticut and, more recently, faces a lawsuit for allegedly stealing wages from his employees at Gourmet Heaven in downtown Providence.

“Defendants are without sufficient knowledge or information to admit or deny that plaintiffs were employed by Gourmet Heaven,” wrote DeSimone in a court filing on behalf of Cho.

Cho is facing a lawsuit from eight workers in Rhode Island for unpaid wages in violation of the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the Rhode Island Minimum Wage Act. The eight workers are being represented by Robert McCreanor and Marissa Janton of the RI Center for Justice. Gourmet Heaven, which Cho recently sold, has been the center of several public demonstrations.

In Connecticut, Cho was charged with “42 felony and misdemeanor counts of wage theft, larceny, and defrauding immigrant workers after a 2013 Connecticut Department of Labor investigation found that Cho owed over $218,000 in unpaid wages” to two dozen restaurant employees, according to a court filing.

The Center for Justice initially filed its lawsuit in February, 2015, after “several requests for extension of the deadline for filing responsive pleadings”. DeSimone filed Cho’s legal response to the Rhode Island lawsuit on May 11, 2015. About a week later, on May 20, 2015, Cho sold Gourmet Heaven to GSP Corp for half a million dollars. At least some of the transactional paperwork for this sale was prepared by DeSimone.

GSP Corp had come into existence about a month earlier, on April 9, “listing 173
Weybosset Street … as its address and Dae Hyun Yoo as its registered agent,” according to the lawsuit. Gourmet Heaven was incorporated at this address, which is also where the restaurant is located. “Dae Hyun Yoo (aka David Yoo) is the Chief Executive Officer of B.C.S. International Corporation (B.C.S.), a wholesale food supply company,” according to the filing. “While operating Gourmet Heaven, LLC, Defendant Chung Cho regularly ordered inventory from B.C.S. and two of its subsidiaries, Hyun Dai International Food Corp and New York Cheese Corp.”

After the sale was finalized on September 14, “$225,389.11 of the $500,000 purchase price was paid directly to B.C.S., Hyun Dai International Food Corp, and New York Cheese Corp, purportedly to satisfy existing debts.” In the closing statement, Chung Cho is listed as receiving only “$1,620.78 from the $500,000 purchase price” after other debts were settled.

In response to this “sale” (quotation marks are included in the complaint) the Center for Justice amended its complaint to include GSP Corp as a defendant., believing the “sale” is merely an attempt to evade liability. GSP Corp hired Brian LaPlante and Michael J Jacobs as lawyers and have moved to have the complaint against them dismissed. A judge will hear the motion on September 20.

Selling the business and pleading poverty to avoid responsibility seems to be Cho’s signature move. One month after he was arrested in Connecticut, he sold his Connecticut Gourmet Heaven stores to Good Nature Café Inc, which was incorporated the previous October.

After selling his Connecticut stores, “on September 30, 2015 Defendant Chung Cho filed for personal bankruptcy in Connecticut,” says the complaint, “In December of 2015 Defendant Chung Cho testified at a hearing in Connecticut that he has no assets, contradicting a previous sworn statement that he possessed between $1 million and $10 million in assets.”

Back in Providence, on September 16, 2015, GSP Corp took over operation of the store located at 173 Weybosset Street, and renamed it Serendipity Gourmet. “The store continues operation at the same address, with many of the same employees, and sells the same products. The signage on the store uses the same font and colors, and the word ‘Gourmet’ still appears in the name. Signs on the exterior of the store proclaimed that it was ‘under new management.’”

In March of this year, GSP Corp applied for a new food dispenser and holiday sales license with the Providence Board of Licenses for their newly minted Serendipity Gourmet. The board’s attorney is Louis DeSimone, Representative John DeSimone’s cousin.

Voters should know when the people we elect to represent us also defend the monsters who oppress us. Anybody being sued deserves legal representation, but using slick legal moves to avoid paying workers their earned wages is simply gross.

DeSimone is facing a challenge to his House seat from Marcia Ranglin-Vassell.

DeSimone did not respond to requests for comment.

June 23, 2016June 24, 2016

Significant protections against wage theft passed

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After years of struggle the Rhode Island General Assembly under the leadership of Senator Donna Nesslebush, and Representative Joe Shekarchi have passed a bill that finally makes the scourge of wage theft a crime. Stealing workers’ wages has always been civil offense with serious hurdles from the bureaucracies that were supposed to help. With close consultation with the DLT and Director Scott Jensen and legislative stakeholder meetings, House Bill 7628 and Senate Bill 2475 passed in the small morning hours on Saturday June 18.

These bills will provide for serious penalties including fines and imprisonment for taking from working Rhode Islanders. Perhaps the most significant penalty is the loss of a business license, the bills also empower the director of the Department of Labor and Training to determine compliance. Encouraging responsible reporting and discouraging false claims, the process of private suit has meaningful safeguards in place.

“Too often we see workers awarded a judgment by DLT only to have the employer refuse to pay what is owed,” said Robert McCreanor executive director of the worker advocacy law firm The Rhode Island Center for Justice. With the power to revoke business licenses from offending employers who refuse to comply with its rulings, DLT will be able to compel prompt payment and get more money, more efficiently, into the hands of the worker who earned it. While more work needs to be done to address the growing problem of wage theft, this bill provides an important tool for Rhode Island workers.”

Said Lidia Jimenez a member of Fuerza Laboral, “As a worker that has had their wages stolen, I feel proud that my testimony and that of Flor Salazar helped elected officials understand the atrocities that are committed daily by bad employers who feel that justice will not reach them and take our daily bread. This will help put an end to some of the abuse.” It is estimated by Economic Progress Institute that over $50,000,000,000 per year are stolen from workers’ wages. The process of enforcement historically has been spotty and difficult to apply.

Jeremy Rix who is running for 2nd ward of the Warwick City Council said, “I’m thrilled that the wage theft reforms introduced by Rep. Shekarchi become law. This law will deter many unethical employers from stealing wages, and provide a meaningful path for vulnerable employees to recover their stolen earnings.”

The organizations that have participated in the effort to pass these two vital bills are: Rhode Island Jobs with Justice, The RIAFL-CIO, Fuerza Laboral, and the Rhode Island Center for Justice. Each of these organizations is committed to improving the conditions of Rhode Island’s working people.

October 28, 2015October 28, 2015

RI Center for Justice discusses lawyering for social change

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It was a packed house at the RI Center for Justice as Executive Director Robert McCreanor lead a discussion about the collaborative work of community organizers and public interest lawyers in the area of social justice. On the panel were organizers and lawyers who work with DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equality) and PrYSM (Providence Youth Student Movement) in Providence, and MFY’s Housing Project, the Three-Quarter House Tenant Organizing Project (TOP) in New York City.

What became clear over the next ninety minutes is that lawyering works in support of community organizing, not the other way around. What this means is that lawyers interested in social justice work need to “find the legal work that can support the organizers,” according to Shannah Kurland, a community lawyer and Soros Justice Fellow at PrYSM.

Kurland started as a community organizer at DARE, and struggled with her decision to become a lawyer. She was “not sure if becoming a lawyer was a right fit” and asked herself, “was it selling out?”

Michael Grinthal, supervising attorney for MFY’s Housing Project and Three-Quarter House Project, also started as a community organizer. For him, lawyering is a better fit, especially now as a father of a two year old. In New York, “all battles come back to housing because its so hard to live in NYC,” said Grinthal.

MFY “was the legal office for the welfare rights movement,” says Grinthal, making a local connection by adding, “George Wiley is one of the founding organizers in that movement.”

The funding for much legal service work comes through “legal services corporation” but under a law pushed through by Newt Gingrich (in a deft example of racist legislating, I should add) “organizations that get such money cannot do community organizing,” said Grinthal

Michael Zabelin, Staff Attorney at Rhode Island Legal Services and a lawyer who often works closely with DARE was never a community organizer. His work with the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau made transition to working with DARE “the obvious thing to do.” Zabelin twice mentioned the influence of community lawyer Steve Fischbach on his ideas around being a lawyer. Fischbach’s work around housing issues was instrumental in getting Just Cause passed a few years ago.

Paulette Soltani works with MFY Legal Services as a community organizer for the Three-Quarter House Tenant Organizing Project (TOP). TOP started five years ago to help organize tenants living in three quarter houses, described as an unregulated housing industry that pretends to offer transitional services for people recently released from prison or substance abuse centers. “They open buildings and pack 6-8 people in,” says Soltani, they sometimes “force the use of certain medicaid providers, as a form of Medicaid fraud.”

People living in these conditions can find themselves evicted without due cause. Often they are locked out and separated from their possessions. This can have the effect of sending these tenants back onto the streets, into homeless shelters, or into conditions that can ultimately send them back to jail or substance abuse.

As a community organizer Soltani must often deal with the immediate and personal issues of those she meets, “but the point of an organizer is to target systems” in addition to base building, outreach and leadership development. Her goal is to allow “people to develop their voices” as leaders and to work within coalitions.

Christopher Samih-Rotondo, Community Organizer at DARE and the Tenant and Homeowner Association (THA) agrees. He organizes low income communities of color in the south side of Providence. He works to develop team leaders for direct action and to effect legislative and policy change.

Samih-Rotondo spoke about Just Cause, passed because during the foreclosure crisis “banks became de facto landlords and would evict tenants without cause.” With lawyers his group “developed legislation to hold banks responsible for landlord tenant act.” The services DARE provides for individuals are done to “bring people in to form a movement, radicalize people, and change the system.”

Shannah Kurland doesn’t want this to sound too mercenary. Not all people who come to a group like DARE will stick around. Still, it’s important to help them. “Here’s a human being, part of our community, facing an issue,” said Kurland, later adding that, “a movement isn’t about one issue.” People who come one year to work on an issue like childcare may come back years later to do foreclosure work.

Samih-Rotondo thinks it is important to build individual capacities in people who come to his group for help. There are many things people can do without a lawyer, if they have the rules explained to them and can be empowered to act on their own behalf.

Soltani said that it is important for community organizers to meet “people where they are and understanding why they’re there in the first place. If they don’t come, ask why?”

For Sarath Suong, co-founder and executive director of PrYSM, lawyers have always been required. We needed “immigration lawyers early on to end Cambodian deportations.” More recently, PrYSM’s work on the Community Safety Act (CSA) required careful legal writing. The CSA has “twelve provisions that will curb profiling” and seeks to free people from “state, street and interpersonal violence.”

However, says Suong, “we know that policy will not save our communities. We know that communities need to save themselves, build a sense of resistance.”

Kurland agrees. “There are a ton of laws to protect you,” she says, “but they not enforced.” People in low-income communities of color learn that “here are your rights on paper,” now, “how do I stay safe on the street?” In other words, is asserting one’s rights in the moment worth the risk of being arrested or beaten?

When PrYSM started back in 2001, “only the police were engaging with SouthEast Asian youth” in Providence,” said Suong. PrYSM is based on Love, Power and Peace, and seeks to “hold Police accountable for the way they profile young people.”

The RI Center for Justice has a mission of “Protecting legal rights to ensure justice for vulnerable individuals, families, and communities in Rhode Island.” The Center currently works with Fuerza Laboral on the Wage Justice Project, with the Community Action Partnership of Providence (CAPP) on the Tenant Advocacy Project and with the George Wiley Center on it’s Lifeline Project.

September 30, 2015September 30, 2015

National Grid sued to stop illegal utility shutoffs

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National Grid and the Rhode Island Division of Public Utilities and Carriers are being sued for turning off the electricity of seriously ill and disabled consumers, putting profits before people’s lives and in violation of Rhode Island state law.

The George Wiley Center and the RI Center for Justice have been working together since May to provide free legal assistance to “hundreds of low-income, medically vulnerable utility consumers.” Their collaboration, said Robert McCreanor, RI Center for Justice executive director, lead to the realization that existing state laws were not being enforced. Since National Grid refuses to negotiate in good faith or follow the law, a class action lawsuit was filed Tuesday morning.

The plaintiffs named in the suit, “suffer from severe medical conditions including chronic respiratory failure, which requires electric powered oxygen machines. They asked National Grid to take their medical conditions into consideration when setting up a payment plan for their back bills, as required by law. When National Grid sent shut-off notices without making the required legal determination, these consumers looked to the state regulator of public utilities for protection but were repeatedly denied. Some plaintiffs required emergency medical treatment and hospitalization after their electric and gas services were shut off.”

Shane Ward, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, told the crowd gathered at the press conference about his experience having the electricity turned off at his home, where his 74 year old mother has Alzheimer’s and epilepsy. She requires the use of a respirator. After being told he was in arrears with his bill and given a shut off date, National Grid arrived a week early. When Ward asked for a few minutes to switch his mother to a different respiratory system, he was denied, and the electricity was turned off, sending his mother into an epileptic fit.

Attorneys are requesting immediate relief through a temporary restraining order. Robert McCreanor estimates at least 3,000 Rhode Islanders may be affected by this class action suit. A restraining order would prohibit termination of service to the proposed class and restoration of service for those now shut off.

“The system is broken,” said McCreanor, “National Grid routinely violates the law and the Division of Public Utilities automatically grants the shut offs National Grid requests. The consequences for seriously ill and disabled consumers are costly for our communities.”

Camilo Viveiros, lead organizer of the George Wiley Center, has battled for years on behalf of utility consumers. Many of the laws National Grid seems content to ignore were passed in the RI General Assembly only through the extraordinary lobbying and organizing work of the Wiley Center under the leadership of poverty advocate Henry Shelton.

“We’re simply asking for the rules that are on the books to be practiced, they’re there to protect people. We’re asking the Division of Public Utilities to follow the law…”