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Friday, February 19, 2010
Miami-Dade County Commissioners Pass Historic Wage Theft Ordinance 10-0
Yesterday Miami-Dade County overwhelmingly passed a new ordinanceto combat wage theft, making it easier for workers to bring legal action against employers who fail to pay or underpay them.
"This is the kind of solidarity that it takes to win," said Maria Rodriguez, Executive Director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition. "Immigrant and US-born workers came together to form the South Florida Wage Theft Task Force and win this victory for all."
Thursday's vote was the culmination of over a year of work by the South Florida Wage Theft Task Force. Similar initiatives are being considered by states and cities across the country, including Los Angeles and New Orleans.
"It's a historic day for all Miami-Dade workers, employers who play by the rules, taxpayers, our economy, and our community, setting the precedent for the nation to follow," said Fred Frost, President of the South Florida AFL-CIO and a task force member.
"This legislation will provide justice for exploited workers using a streamlined hearing examiner process, at very little cost to our county," said Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners member Natacha Seijas, the measure's principal sponsor. "I am very pleased that every colleague present today voted in favor of this Ordinance."
"And now, the real work begins," said Jeanette Smith, Executive Director of South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice. "Tomorrow, we go out to the streets and we talk to workers. We visit congregations. We educate. We involve our community in a countywide effort to implement this historic piece of legislation. The message is clear -- thou shalt not steal. Not in our community. Not anywhere."
Thursday, December 17, 2009
As wage theft rises, states and cities crack down
By SOPHIA TAREEN and LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ (AP) � Dec 17, 2009
CHICAGO � Fabian Gutierrez logged more than 60 hours a week slicing meat and stocking shelves with cheeses and milk at a neighborhood grocery for less than minimum wage and no overtime.
The 32-year-old Mexican immigrant said he put up with the situation for months because he was desperate to support his wife and young daughter. And like many co-workers, he was afraid to challenge his boss.
"All of us took abuse. We were disrespected," said Gutierrez, who found help at a workers' rights center, joined with other workers to sue the owner of La Fruteria and now works at another grocery store that he says treats him better.
Across the nation, the long-simmering problem of employers who don't pay their workers appears to be getting worse, especially for immigrant laborers.
In the absence of aggressive federal action, some states and local governments have begun to tackle the issue on their own. They say employers who don't pay overtime or minimum wage are unlikely to pay into state workers' compensation or unemployment insurance funds � bilking taxpayers even as they're cheating workers.
Workers rights centers say wage theft has become the No. 1 complaint they've heard in recent months.
In Chicago, Working Hands Legal Clinic, which is helping Gutierrez, received 161 complaints of wage theft from January through June 2008. That jumped by more than 60 percent to 252 complaints during the same period this year.
The Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network says at least 50 percent of day laborers � there are 120,000 on a given day in the U.S. � experience some form of wage theft.
About 68 percent of low-wage workers reported wage theft in 2008, regardless of citizenship status, according to a study released earlier this year that surveyed 4,400 low-wage workers in major U.S. cities, the first such extensive review in years.
"It's not confined to the margins, or a few rogue employers. Employers realize that workers are desperate," said Nik Theodore, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and lead author of the study conducted with the University of California, Los Angeles and the City University of New York. "It looks like standard business practice in many industries."
Wage theft has even emerged in industries where there haven't previously been many complaints, like fairs and carnivals, according to the Workers' Rights Law Center of New York. Earlier this year, Dreamland Amusements Inc. agreed to pay $325,000 in back wages to Mexican workers in New York after the company was accused of forcing them to work 70 hours a week at less than minimum wage.
Low-wage immigrant workers are particularly vulnerable because most are paid in cash, making record-keeping difficult. Many fear a call to immigration authorities, even if they have legal status to work in the U.S.
Gutierrez, a soft-spoken, husky man who declined to discuss his immigration status, said he and other workers were scared to bring up the problems with their employer because they feared they might be deported. Eventually, Gutierrez said, he overcame his fear because he wanted to make sure others weren't wronged.
Gutierrez's former boss, Tony Macias, owns several grocery stores throughout Chicago. His attorney, William J. Raleigh, said Macias didn't know he had to pay overtime.
Until recently, such lawsuits have been the main way for workers to fight back. But lawyers often won't take the cases since they take months to resolve, the payoff is low and collection is difficult.
"Even if we win, that's usually just the beginning," said Milan Bhatt of The Workers' Rights Law Center. "By the time the litigation is resolved, they've closed shop and moved elsewhere."
Some states are looking for creative solutions. California and New York created multi-agency task forces that raid problem industries, such as car washes and grocery stores, and focus on regions where workers repeatedly report violations.
"Having everyone go out together shows a very powerful message that you can't just pay the piper and keep going," said Terri Gerstein, New York's deputy labor commissioner for wage and immigrant services.
Advocates say enforcing wage and hour laws even for laborers in the country illegally keeps wages for all workers from being driven down and ensures that employers who follow the rules can compete.
California has also required some businesses to pay a state registration fee, which pays workers if violations are later found and funds a collections department, making fines enforceable.
Some worker advocates say combining efforts for massive raids is good publicity but nets little for workers because the focus is on recovering unemployment or Social Security taxes for the state rather than overtime wages for the employee.
In response, New York Labor Commissioner M. Patricia Smith has worked with community-based groups and even unions, which are often the first to receive labor complaints, in a nationally recognized effort to identify employers violating labor laws.
"Unlike with a state agency, people don't feel nervous coming to us and sharing their stories, even undocumented folks," said Andrew Friedman, co-executive director of Make the Road New York.
Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts are beginning to adopt some similar approaches and adding their own twists, such as hefty fines and online complaint filing.
In Miami-Dade County, a nongovernmental wage theft task force is pushing to create a low-cost, streamlined complaint process. San Francisco already has a similar ordinance, and Los Angeles and New Orleans are considering such proposals.
Still, advocates say the federal government needs to step up enforcement. Despite reports from the ground that wage theft is on the rise, the U.S. Department of Labor reported a 25 percent drop in registered complaints from low-wage workers from the start of the Bush administration through 2008, the most recent data available.
A recent Congressional report slammed the Labor Department for frequently failing to investigate or even register some complaints; a bill in the House would extend the federal statute of limitations on some violations to give the department more time to investigate them.
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has added about 250 wage and hour inspectors, and last week, the department signed an agreement with the New York labor department, Mexican Consulate and several other groups to create a call center that will provide Hispanic workers in the New York area information about their labor rights.
For now, Gutierrez and his former employer are trying to work things out in court, but he's unsure if he'll get all the back pay he says he's owed.
"I want my voice to be heard," he said. "We don't do the work for free."
Laura Wides-Munoz reported from Miami.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Legal system fights against wage theft
A recent study shows that more than half of the country's 100,000 or so day-laborers were not paid for work they did in the last two months. Jeff Tyler reports what the legal system is doing to protect these workers.
To Listen to the PodCast Click Here.
TEXT OF STORY
Bill Radke: Everyday, there are about 100,000 day-laborers in this country looking for work. You've probably seen them waiting outside a home improvement store. A recent study showed more than half of day-laborers did work in the last two months that they never got paid for. Wage theft is on the rise. Marketplace's Jeff Tyler reports the legal system is starting to fight back.
Jeff Tyler: The owner of a Los Angeles construction company was recently convicted on criminal charges for not paying his workers. Officials in New Orleans are also talking about making wage theft a crime. So, who picks up the legal tab for protecting these mostly undocumented laborers?
Natacha Seijas: It's not going to be taxpayers' money.
That's Miami-Dade Commissioner Natacha Seijas. She's proposing a new ordinance to fine cheapskate employers, and use the revenue to cover Miami's legal expenses.
Seijas: So that it's cost-neutral to the county.
Others see protecting laborers as beneficial to the larger economy. Chris Newman is with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. He says employers who don't pay workers force competitors to cut costs or risk losing business.
Chris Newman:It's more difficult for law-abiding employers to compete with unscrupulous employers.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Labor Department is hiring 250 investigators -- increasing its staff by a third -- to keep up with complaints about wage theft.
I'm Jeff Tyler for Marketplace.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/08/18/am-wage-theft
Monday, August 17, 2009
By Emily Bazar, USA TODAY
More workers are getting stiffed just when they need their pay the most.
Complaints of wage theft have risen as the economy tumbled. Allegations range from underpayment to not getting paid at all.
"It's definitely on the rise nationally because of the economic crisis," says Ted Smukler, public policy director of Interfaith Worker Justice, a Chicago organization that advocates for better wages, benefits and working conditions. "Employers are desperate to shave corners when their profits are going down, and some are just greedy."
Wage theft is most common among low-wage earners and day laborers, he says. It affects non-immigrants and immigrants, legal and illegal.
Last year, the Department of Labor collected $57.5 million in back wages for 77,000 workers in industries such as agriculture and garment making. The year before, it collected $52.7 million.
In Austin, the Workers Defense Project received 63 complaints in June, compared with 25 it had in June last year, policy advocate Emily Timm says.
Workers are desperate, she says. "They're sticking with jobs when they're not getting paid because they know they're going to have trouble finding another job," she says. "They're holding onto hope that the employer will come through and pay them in the end."
Chicago's Working Hands Legal Clinic has been getting more complaints from construction, restaurant, janitorial and other workers, Executive Director Chris Williams says. It got 252 in the first half of the year, compared with 161 in the same period last year.
Most are immigrants, he says. The U.S. Labor Department says illegal immigrants are covered under minimum-wage and overtime laws.
"We do a lot of work with workers at temporary staffing agencies, people who work maybe 32 hours but they're only getting paid for 26," Williams says.
The Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center, which helped workers collect $200,000 in wages last year, already has collected $160,000 this year, director Don Sherman says.
He expects the total to surpass last year's because the center is currently helping 50 workers who allege wage theft, including a man who says he is owed $34,000 for two months of stone- and concrete-laying work he says he wasn't paid for and more than a year's worth of overtime.
Most are illegal immigrants, who are vulnerable to abuse because employers can threaten to report them, Sherman says.
"We've seen a remarkable increase," he says, citing a growing problem of contractors who underbid on jobs, then make up the difference by cheating workers. "They're going to take whatever money is left over for themselves and not pay the workers," he says.
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Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2009-08-16-wagethreat_N.htm
By Emily Bazar, USA TODAY
Agustin Gonzalez became a casualty of the real-estate bust in 2007 when he lost his construction job in the Florida Keys.
Since then, he says, he has become another kind of casualty: a victim of wage theft.
Gonzalez now works as a day laborer in the Miami area, waiting on street corners or in front of Home Depot for pickup jobs. He says he has been cheated of pay three times, including twice this year on landscaping and construction jobs that cost him at least $2,600.
"I feel like a slave," says Gonzalez, 38, who entered the USA from Panama in 2006 on a work visa that has expired. "I feel like day laborers are just here to be used without respect."
As the economy falters, lawmakers are taking action on the increase of wage-theft complaints.
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Natacha Seijas plans to propose an ordinance cracking down on wage theft next month. The legislation, yet to be drafted, may impose fines or other penalties, she says.
At South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice, at least 20 people report wage theft each week, three times as many as a year ago, director Jeanette Smith says. She says that an ordinance would help.
"You don't have people work like slaves and pay them when you want to just because there's a bad economy," Seijas says.
A June report by the Government Accountability Office criticized the Labor Department's enforcement of wage-theft complaints, calling its investigations "ineffective" and "often delayed by months or years."
In response, Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat, co-authored a bill last month that would freeze the statute of limitations on wage-theft claims during investigations, giving workers time to pursue options such as lawsuits.
"If the government screws up ... the worker should be able to pursue a separate action," Miller says.
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said in a news release that the department is hiring 250 more investigators � it had 731 in September of last year � to "refocus the agency on these enforcement responsibilities."
In New Orleans, wage theft is up partly because Hurricane Katrina sparked a building boom that attracted unscrupulous contractors, says Luz Molina, a professor at Loyola College of Law there. The school's Workplace Justice Project is one of the groups that runs a weekly workshop for laborers. It drew between five and 10 workers a week in early 2008 and gets 20 now, she says.
Molina is working with City Council President Arnie Fielkow on an ordinance that Fielkow says is likely to make wage theft a crime, not a civil matter.
"You simply need to pay those people," Fielkow says. "It is unethical, inhumane and morally wrong to do otherwise."
In Florida, Gonzalez has not filed complaints against the employers he says stiffed him. In one case, he says, he was underpaid $2,500 for working more than four months remodeling homes. After he threatened to sue, the employer agreed to pay him little by little and still owes $1,400.
He also says he has given up on collecting at least $130 for a day's work trimming trees. "It's my word against his word," he says.
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