Today marks a new era for one of Documented’s longest running projects: The Wage Theft Monitor. Now, in addition to reports that cover financial abuse in New York City businesses, we are adding tens of thousands of records that cover injuries in workplaces across the state and with that, we are renaming it the Business Monitor.
These records tell the stories of how workers get crushed under branches, lose fingers to blenders and machinery and even succumb to fatal injuries. From the mundane; like the Ralph Lauren employee who hit their head while attempting to change a light bulb, to the extreme; like the Brooklyn Union Gas worker who sustained a fractured jaw after a two pound metal plug flew off a machine they were working on; these reports help shed light on the daily dangers workers face. Every new report in the database was gathered and published by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Unlike wage theft, many of these incidents are mistakes and do not necessarily indicate any wrongdoing on behalf of employers. They do, however, provide the most comprehensive accounting of how workers routinely get hurt on the jobsite, a critically important and underreported issue. We are hoping that this information will be the basis of a greater understanding about the dangers workers face on jobsites across the state. The new information also includes self reported injury data from OSHA, that has less specificity, but also indicates when a worker got sick or injured.
Alongside this updated information, we are releasing new data about wage theft cases from the calendar year 2025 from the state and federal Departments of Labor. Every year at the beginning of the year, Documented files a Freedom of Information Law request to the state Department of Labor and combines that with the federal Department of Labor data to build out public knowledge of the latest investigations and where they stand. This new tranche of information includes many new major wage theft cases.
First launched in 2023, the Wage Theft Monitor was the largest repository of data about wage theft in New York at the time. After it went live — as well as a three part series co-published with ProPublica — the governor stated that ending wage theft was a top priority that year, a state senator introduced bills based on our findings, the state Department of Labor began proactively publishing data on its site, and other newsrooms were able to use our data or were inspired by the project. Every year since, we have updated the information in the database with the most recent cases, in order to keep New Yorkers informed about the active wage thieves in their areas.
If you want to check out the data, navigate to the search bar and click through the map to move around the city and explore these issues geographically. You can also search by company name and zip code.
From the beginning, we have hoped that this project would be of service to New York City. Since it launched, we have heard from journalists, professionals, lawyers and concerned citizens who use the Monitor to investigate business owners, research wage theft and file lawsuits to help recoup lost wages on behalf of workers. In this new iteration, we are hoping it will be equally helpful to New York City’s labor community. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to info@documentedny.com.
