2019-09-16 EDA Minutes (signed) - Laserfiche WebLink

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REDA Meeting Minutes—Monday,September 16,2019 Page 6 working for Caliper. He explained when he started to work for Jose Marino as an employee for Caliper on Reuter Walton job sites, Mr. Marino promised him somewhere to work, somewhere good to live, and a means to support his family. He stated once he started working for them, a set price was offered but once he was working with them the company started lowering the price of his wages and he would stop paying them telling them that he did not have the money to pay them. He stated they would ask Caliper if Reuter Walton would pay him and Caliper would say that yes, Reuter Walton had paid him. Ask Reuter Walton. They would also go to Reuter Walton and ask if Caliper had gotten paid and Reuter Walton would tell him that Caliper has been paid. That is how things kept on going for a while. Everyone would say things are going well and no one wanted to pay him. He noted he stopped working for Jose Marino after that because Mr. Marino had his family living in poor conditions. He went to the Department of Labor to open a case so he could try to recoup some of his money, but he started receiving calls from Jose Marino intimidating him and stating he would kill him and his family. After that, he was not feeling safe. He asked himself why he was being threatened if he was just making an honest living. He tried talking to his wife and telling her that everything was going to get better. He explained he was with his wife, at home eating and he received a telephone call from Jose Marino telling him that the Department of Labor had contacted him and that if he did not drop the case he had against Jose Marino, he would kill him and his family. He needed to drop this case because he did not know what he was getting himself into. After that he did not know what to do and felt intimidated. He did not know who to talk to and simply felt that it would happen any day. He just wanted to say one thing, he wanted to point out that Reuter Walton is the company that hire subcontractors like Jose Marino and that company needs to realize the type of companies that are being hired by them because the type of workers are honest workers. He indicated that just because the company is at the top of the food chain and the workers are at the bottom and the workers are screaming at the company to do change. But, the company is never going to hear them, that is Reuter Walton. He wanted the community to realize the conditions his family lives in and the threats he receives on a daily basis. He wants the community to realize that every time a project goes up and it is considered beautiful, he wants the community to start thinking about the workers who built those buildings and ask themselves if those workers have gotten paid because to work for $16.00 an hour, working six to seven days a week, ten to twelve hours a day, he did not think this was just for them to be going through this. He wanted the community to realize what is going on today and now. He wanted to say sincerely that this is still continually going on as an exploitation. To the workers and not to him, to benefit him financially for all of the money that he has not gotten paid but to make Minnesota what it is. Samuel Samuel (speaking in Spanish with an interpreter), explained he also worked for Jose Marino and Caliper. He also went through the same things that Eric went