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New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. is continuing to strengthen his prevailing wage and living wage campaign by forging partnerships with clergy across the city so that working people know about their rights to fair wages and benefits.

The joint effort, entitled “Immigrant Prevailing Wage & Living Wage Outreach Partnership,” seeks to ensure that immigrants and other workers are paid the legal wages and benefits that are required by law when employed on New York City government construction contracts, building service contracts and contracts to provide services such as security, home health care and day care.

“We want to work with civic and clergy organizations to alert their members about workers’ rights under the State’s Labor Law and the City’s Administrative Code,” Thompson said. “The success of this new endeavor depends on the active participation of so many people such as clergy leaders, immigrant groups and worker advocacy organizations.”

Late last year, Thompson’s office sent out hundreds of letters to community, immigrant and worker advocacy groups asking for their help in making sure that employees are paid their lawful wages when working on public contracts. Now, Thompson is expanding that effort by sending out more than 4,000 letters notifying clergy about the law.

The Comptroller’s office has issued a new series of multi-lingual flyers to educate workers, including home attendants, laborers, security guards and those involved in carpentry. The office also provides speakers available to discuss labor law issues with advocacy and community groups.

The Comptroller enforces New York State laws that require private sector contractors doing public work to pay their employees the same wage that prevails in the trade where the public work is being done. The Comptroller’s Bureau of Labor Law has helped thousands of workers recover wages owed to them by municipal contractors who failed to comply with the law. By enforcing prevailing wage laws, the office has helped keep the playing field level for competitive bidding on City construction projects.

In January, Thompson announced that his office secured the biggest prevailing wage settlement ever in the history of the Comptroller’s Office in terms of the number of workers to be paid back wages because of prevailing wage violations. The John C. Mandel Security company was forced to pay $754,307 in unpaid benefits and interest to 720 security guards the firm shortchanged in 2004.

In 2006, the Bureau collected more than $5 million in back wages for workers who were underpaid by New York City contractors, by far the most collected for prevailing wage violations in the last decade and one of the highest amounts collected in the history of any Comptroller’s administration. The Bureau also assessed $414,950 in penalties against contractors who broke labor laws. Since taking office, Comptroller Thompson also has debarred 20 contractors from doing business with the City because of labor law violations.

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