The New York City comptroller’s office announced a settlement today with United Staffing Solutions, a healthcare staffing agency, for its failure to pay hundreds of thousands in prevailing wages to its workers, many of whom are immigrants.
The settlement totals $644,032.81, including back wages, civil penalties, and interest to 54 former temp workers who were employed at various medical facilities across the five boroughs. According to the comptroller’s office, one worker alone was owed $30,000 in back wages.
The settlement comes after the comptroller’s office Bureau of Labor Law uncovered that for three years, from April 2015 through August 2018, United failed to pay prevailing wage and supplemental benefits to the 54 temp employees who worked as secretaries, clerks, and receptionists at city-run medical facilities like Harlem Hospital.
New York State’s prevailing wage laws, which are enforced by the comptroller, establish the wage and benefit rate for employees at various public works projects and building service work on New York City government-funded work sites. Temp workers at city hospitals are also covered under prevailing wage law.
According to the Bureau of Labor Law’s investigation, the employees at United Staffing who worked between 2015 and 2018 should have been paid a prevailing wage rate of $14.82 to $25.34 per hour. Yet, workers like Edna Zuniga, 49, were paid $11 an hour when she should have been paid a much higher wage of $19.58 an hour.
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An immigrant from Belize, Zuniga worked for United Staffing in 2014. During her time with the company, she was placed in various medical facilities, including the city-run Harlem Hospital where she worked as a file clerk.
At the time she was hired, she was new to the country and was experiencing homelessness, staying in the Bowery Mission Women’s Center, she said. Desperate for work, she was glad to have found work.
“To be honest with you, I was happy working for them because of my situation,” she said. “Just finding a job for me had worked out perfectly. It wasn’t my ideal job, but just getting some monies in my pocket worked out for me.”
After nine months, she quit working for United Staffing after finding a full-time position at New York Presbyterian, never looking back, she said. However, in 2024 she received a letter from the comptroller’s office informing her she may be entitled to wages she earned but was never paid.
The office told her she was owed $2,361.65 in back wages plus another $1,817.97 in interest, totaling $4,179.62. “I don’t think they should take advantage of employees such as myself who don’t necessarily know the law as me myself was new to New York,” she said, recalling her time with the company.
The Bureau of Labor Law filed a lawsuit against United Staffing in April 2024 at the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings. United, who is not affiliated with the insurance company UnitedHealthcare, agreed to a settlement as well as admitted to the finding that they willfully violated the law.
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“United Staffing willfully underpaid fifty-four medical office workers their hard-earned wages under the City’s prevailing wage laws,” said Comptroller Brad Lander in a statement shared with Documented. “My office will fight for every prevailing wage worker employed or contracted by the City of New York to ensure they get the money and benefits they deserve.”
It’s not the first time United Staffing has been in hot water. In 2023, the New York State Department of Labor found that United Staffing owed one employee $4,035 in unpaid wages. They also found that the company owed wages in 2019 and in 2017.
United Staffing is also a major contractor with the city. The company currently has 39 open contracts with several city agencies. One 2023 contract with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development is valued at $500,000. Another contract with the Department of Education is worth $66.79 million.
Zuniga had frank words for United Staffing management after the settlement was announced.
“They should treat their employees with respect and gratitude because we are the ones that make them their money,” she said. “It is unfair, and they should really think about what they’re doing and give workers what is owed to them. Just pay your employees and be fair.”
