‘Things are better now’: Foreign workers who said they were exploited while building U.S. consulate in Milan settle for record $35 million

Foreign workers building the vast new U.S. consulate compound in Milan signed agreements at a Milan hotel Wednesday securing payouts averaging 45,000 euros ($50,400) each for alleged labor abuses while working for an American construction company.

More than 60 laborers, mostly from India, signed the deals Wednesday to receive their share of a 31-million-euro (nearly $35 million) settlement agreed last month with Alabama-based Caddell Construction.

The signings began Tuesday.

Prosecutors say it is the largest settlement ever for labor exploitation in Europe.

Each worker signed a document seen by The Associated Press agreeing not to discredit Caddell and not to disclose the individual payments.

Caddell said in the document that the settlement was not an admission of liability.

Individual payments are to be made within 30 days of the signing.

The workers saw the potentially life-changing sum in black-and-white for the first time at the signings — with the highest reaching nearly 90,000 euros (nearly $101,000), said Francesco Brigatti, the court-appointed administrator working to return the consulate construction site to legality.

The payouts combine unpaid overtime, reimbursement for housing illegally deducted from their pay and hefty damages personally sought by investigating Prosecutor Paolo Storari, Brigatti said.

“The damages component alone amounts to 60–70% of the overtime total,” Brigatti said, well above the 10% to 30% that he said is more customary in such cases.

Dilip Ram, a 43-year-old mason from India, has worked at the Milan consulate site for more than two years.

He said the money would go a long way to helping his family of five back home in the Indian state of Bihar.

“Things are better now than before … we get more rest now,” Ram said, after signing the deal.

“This has led to a lot of change.