Bronx construction workers push city to drop labor brokers from affordable housing

Construction workers and advocates from the Bronx want the city to stop relying on labor brokers for affordable housing. They say low pay and unsafe jobs leave some of the people building the city’s housing unable to support their own families.

Current and former labor-broker workers spoke at a community town hall organized by LIUNA Local 79. They described their wages, their working conditions and what they called retaliation by employers.

Labor brokers and Mamdani’s affordable housing plan

The push comes as Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration moves ahead with Block by Block, which aims to create 200,000 affordable homes. Labor advocates want that building effort to deliver well-paid union jobs. They object to labor brokers, sometimes called “body shops,” which recruit mostly from low-income and vulnerable communities, especially immigrants and people who were formerly incarcerated.

Dave Bolger runs the Mason Tenders’ District Council, part of LIUNA, as its business manager. He said the group wants the city to cut its ties with these brokers. He acknowledged that body shops are not illegal but said the city should, at minimum, commit “not to use these labor brokers on government subsidized housing.” By the end of the town hall, dozens of people, workers and neighbors among them, had added their names to that pledge.

Bolger and other activists also said the people building affordable housing earn too little to live in it.

Construction Act wage rules take effect Jan. 1, 2027

Bolger took part in negotiating the Construction Act, which passed earlier this year. Starting Jan. 1, 2027, developers who get city help to build affordable housing will have to pay at least a firm wage floor, provide benefits and hire from the local community.

One worker said he had been placed on jobs by two firms that supply non-union crews to city-backed affordable housing sites around the New York area. His pay, he said, was $18 hourly, and work often came with just a few hours of warning. According to him, employers held back paychecks when workers raised complaints about sick leave or job conditions, and the sick time he had built up vanished. He added that he got no mental health care after being verbally abused.

Sandra Lobo, who heads Our Bronx, said investing in communities also means paying wages that let families get by and treating the workers who do the building with “dignity and respect.”