All the Gubernatorial candidates did last night, and I’m disappointed no one questioned that. Last night’s town hall was hosted in part by El Mundo and moderated by Alberto Vasallo III, the CEO of El Mundo and a few related businesses. Turns out of one those businesses, Caribe Communications and Publishing, has liens out against it for more than $50,000 in unpaid state unemployment taxes going back to 2009. (Do a search for Caribe Communications at the Suffolk County Register of Deeds and you’ll see what I’m talking about. You can verify at the Corporations Division that Vasallo is the President of Caribe).
This is a crime, and it is stealing from the employees by failing to provide for the benefits they’ve earned. And if you do a few more searches at the Suffolk County Register of Deeds link posted above, it’s not just the last five years that El Mundo, Vasallo, his father (Alberto Vasallo Jr), and related businesses have been cheating their workers. They’ve paid off their previous unemployment tax liens, but this has been a fairly consistent problem going back to the 1980s.
This is also at least the second Vasallo-sponsored event the candidates have been to this month. I doubt any of the candidates realized how sleazy a business El Mundo is, and I fully support the desire to reach out to the Latino community. But next time, let’s have legitimate organizations host these events. Organizations that respect their workers, and the law. Boston has other Spanish-language newspapers, La Semana and El Planeta (and maybe others I’m not aware of), which do not have the same record of corruption and abuse. Let them do it next time. El Mundo should not be a part of our political discourse unless it cleans up its act.
waldox says
It’s possible the workers still can get unemployment when eligible; the state, however, is getting screwed. IF the workers get the unemployment, then the state must subsidize it. The campaigns should have researched the event backers. Finding info about a corporation’s tax lien — publicly available info in the internet — is pretty easy.