Advocates innovate approach to underground economies
—By Kendall Davis
Melvin Yee ’05 and Matt Sirolly ’05 never imagined they would be experts in “underground” workers’ rights less than three years out of law school.
“Sometimes it feels like a new form of law,” says Yee.
Yee and Sirolly founded The Wage Justice Center, which helps workers employed in ‘underground’ economies — often denied proper wages and overtime pay — to gain the payment they are owed. The pair spoke to USC Law students Jan. 28 at the invitation of the Public Interest Law Foundation.
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| Sirolly, left, and Yee, right, run The Wage |
“At the start, we were teaching ourselves the issues,” Sirolly said. He and Yee had an inkling of what they wanted their work to be, and every moment has been challenging and rewarding, Sirolly said. “We’re taking concepts from commercial law … things like contract law … and applying them to these cases.”
Underground economies are based off of the exploitation of mostly immigrant workers, at wages as low as three dollars an hour and work weeks of as many as 70 hours.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” Yee said. “People are exploited every day, and normally it can take up to a year for someone to file a wages claim. It takes a great deal of courage for people to stand up for themselves.”
That is where the Wage Justice Center steps in.
“We saw an unmet need,” said Sirolly. “While we were in law school, we did a lot of public interest work, and we saw something that pissed us off.”
While observing the state of affairs for underground workers provided the catalyst for action, it was the experiences the two incurred while volunteering that set their course.
“We volunteered at a lot of worker’s rights clinics. Part of the reason we stayed there, not only because of the events, was because there were some cool, good people working there,” Sirolly said.
Yee and Sirolly founded their center in September 2007, helped by a grant from Echoing Green, an investor group that supports entrepreneurial thinking in the nonprofit sector. The grant has allowed the center to stretch its legs and begin working actively in a constantly changing field of law.
Students considering a career in public interest would benefit greatly from interning or clerking at The Wage Justice Center or another public interest group, Sirolly said. “You will meet amazing people, but the problem is so huge.”
With as many as 29 percent of Los Angeles residents working in underground economies, Yee and Sirolly are staunch believers in their purpose.
“What we are trying to do at The Wage Justice Center is bring some justice for these workers here, and lift them up from the poverty that they live in,” Sirolly said. “So far we have done well, but there is a long way to go.”
For more information, visit The Wage Justice Center website.
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