The Whidbey Island Job Scam
Workers are left stranded and out of pocket after a hiring agent vanishes.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
N. J. McDonald, representative of the firm of B. A. & Co., who has been hiring laborers to go to Whidbey Island at extraordinary good wages, left the St. Charles hotel yesterday morning and has not returned. Late last night a number of the men who paid $1 for the privilege of the company's bay, while working on Whidbey Island, were asking to find the representative. One of the men said: 'I paid $1 to go get a job on the island, and now the man is gone and we are left out in the cold.' A few of them, it is said, were sent to the island, but it is reported that they were left without tools or shelter.
“I paid $1 to go get a job on the island, and now the man is gone and we are left out in the cold.”
Exploitative recruitment practices targeting desperate laborers mirror modern issues with gig work and 'pay-to-play' employment schemes that take advantage of vulnerable populations.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.