IWJ (National) Contact: Cathy Junia 
Phone: 773-710-9837
Email: cjunia@iwj.org

HIWJ (Houston) Contact: Jose Eduardo Sanchez
Phone: (O) 713-862-8222; (M) 832-715-5975
Email: jose@hiwj.org

REPORT HIGHLIGHTS PREVALENCE AND IMPACT OF WAGE THEFT IN HOUSTON

Groups around the country are fighting back to end this crime
 against workers

More than $753.2 million in wages are stolen from workers in the Houston region each year, according to a new report by the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center (HIWJ). The repercussions of this crime are city-wide and affect business owners, communities, and workers alike.

“We’ve always known about the great hardships faced by workers due to wage theft,” says Jose Eduardo Sanchez, HIWJ organizer and the report’s primary author. “However, we also know that there were effects beyond just the worker, that also affected entire communities and our local economy.”

The report — “Houston, We Have a Wage Theft Problem: The Impact of Wage Theft in Our City, and the Local Solutions Necessary to Stop It” — is available at www.downwithwagetheft.org or on our reports page.

Wage theft is a big problem in Houston, but it doesn’t just happen there. The reality is that every day, millions of workers across our country are being robbed and cheated by their employers. But workers and their allies are fighting back. 
HIWJ and a coalition of community, faith, and labor groups and a number of responsible businesses kicked off the Down With Wage Theft Campaign, pushing for steeper penalties, beefed-up enforcement and protections for workers who report stolen wages

Legislation has been passed in Texas, San Francisco, Seattle and Miami-Dade County. Several groups in other parts of the country are gearing up for wage theft campaigns in their areas. Stay tuned.

Interfaith Worker Justice has been organizing, educating and advocating at the intersection of work and faith since 1996. To learn more about the national campaign to end wage theft, visit www.iwj.org.

Two long sheets of metal were nailed across the wall of the gallery, and directly below them, a steel cart held pots and pans of all sizes. On the metal sheets were scattered pieces of paper with different quotes. Meant as a revelation of restaurant workers’ thoughts, one of them read, “you can’t ask for a raise, if you ask, if you demand, they’ll show you the door.”

After seeing her partner go through wage theft, discrimination, and indifference for many years as a restaurant worker, Christina Sanchez was motivated to create Break/Pausa, an innovative artistic project meant to be a “dialogical investigation” into the lives of immigrant restaurant workers living in Los Angeles….

http://www.thecorsaironline.com/arts-entertainment/2012/05/08/restaurant-workers-rights-the-topic-of-conversation/

Mary Vargas worked as a housekeeper here in the Houston area. That is until her employer decided not to pay her.

“She was working as a domestic worker and she went six months where they did not want to pay her her wages and also overtime, and she worked up to 73 hours a week.”

Vargas’ case is an example of what one group calls “wage theft.”

Jose Sanchez of Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center says it happens more often than you might think.

“It starts with small deductions in paychecks saying, ‘Oh, well in the next check, you’ll recover that, or in the next one, I’ll pay you back this,’ and little by little this starts accumulating. And a person who needs a job and depends on that job to feed their family and their kids, they will take the chance to see if that money comes instead of quitting initially.”…
http://app1.kuhf.org/articles/1336507869-Local-Group-Calls-Wage-Theft-A-Growing-Problem.html

WEST PALM BEACH — Two Palm Beach County commissioners said Thursday night they would support a wage-theft ordinance similar to one Miami-Dade County has approved, and a third said she thinks a compromise could be reached on the issue.

Commissioners Paulette Burdick and Jess R. Santamaria offered their support at the annual assembly of People Engaged in Active Community Efforts, or PEACE, a grassroots organization of local churches.

An estimated crowd of 2,000 people gathered for the meeting at the Palm Beach County Convention Center. PEACE also questioned Santamaria about high unemployment in the Glades.

Palm Beach County commissioners are expected to considered a wage-theft proposal in the next 90 days that could be similar to the Miami-Dade law. It creates a process that workers can use to recover wages from an employer who fails to pay them an agreed-upon amount. Before that, workers in Miami-Dade had to go to court to recover their wages, which often is a costly process.

A Florida International University study found the Miami-Dade program has recovered more than $400,000 in unpaid wages since it began in 2010. An effort to ban counties from imposing such laws failed in the state Legislature this year.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/three-palm-beach-county-commissioners-open-to-wage-2327659.html

Fresno, Calif. –  For years, the agriculture industry in the United States has been dependent on low-wage workers, often undocumented immigrants. However due to the fact that many employers pay their workers in cash it is increasingly common for workers to have their wages withheld or to not receive their proper pay.

“There is no paper trail. There is no record of hours, there is no record of overtime, there is no record of breaks, and therefore no record of payment,” said Antonio Avalos economics professor at California State University Fresno.

Since the economic recession there has been an increase in the number of wage theft reports. Experts say employers are trying to cut corners and reduce costs during tough economic times.

“If they a see an opportunity for not paying somebody and somebody is unable to fight back sometimes they’ll make cuts,” said Avalos.

Andres Ramirez said he tried cashing a check for $160 for his farm work in Kerman, Calif., but when he went to the bank, they told him there were insufficient funds in the account. He said his farm contractor wrote him a bad check.

“First of all I thought about how I had the dignity to think of help by filing a claim with Labor Commission’s Office,” Ramirez said

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/04/28/wage-theft-claims-on-rise-in-agriculture-industry/#ixzz1tUbHOfyq

The report, Cracking Down on Wage Theft: State Strategies for Protecting Workers and Recovering Revenues, highlights New York’s law which went into effect April 9, 2011 and should help the state recover up to $427 million each year in lost revenue from underpayment of wages – amounting to $1.5 billion per year for workers in New York City alone. The report argues that the revenue so recovered would more than make up for the state’s projected $350 million budget gap, an important signal to other states that have not begun to address this problem.

Read the full report here.

The 32-year-old Ecuador native cleaned four or five chimneys per day for about three weeks. Working 70 hours each week, Chillogalli recalled, the company owned him about $3,200 at the end of his stint.

“[The company's owner] paid me only $300,” Chillogalli said. “She said, ‘Please wait, I don’t have the money.’ ”

He called until she stopped returning his calls. The next—and last—time the two spoke, Chillogalli recalled, she told him he didn’t have any papers and he wasn’t getting paid.

It’s a problem that affects day laborers throughout Connecticut and nationwide, experts say.

And it’s one that advocates for workers like Chillogalli are addressing in a new way in Danbury, through a so-called “How to Get Paid” class…

http://danbury.patch.com/articles/teaching-day-laborers-self-defense-bridging-the-achievement-gap

A College Point business that cheated a group of workers out of more than $1 million was ordered to pay up and is barred from bidding on contracts in the Big Apple for five years, the city comptroller said last week.

Mascon Restoration Inc., a construction firm that was working on behalf of several city agencies in 2007, not only failed to provide its workers with the prevailing wages required under any public works contract, but told a group of largely undocumented workers that inspectors from the city were also immigration agents, according to city Comptroller John Liu.

“This settlement helps to right the wrongs suffered by these hardworking people, and strong message that contractors working on city projects must pay prevailing wages as required under law,” Liu said at an April 4 news conference.

The company, headquartered at 129-06 18th Ave. and headed by Muhammad Zulfiqar, underpaid a group of what the comptroller’s office estimated at about 10 to 20 people, in some cases only giving them half of the daily wages they were entitled to….

http://www.timesledger.com/stories/2012/15/wagefraud_wt_2012_04_12_q.html

Warehouse workers in Southern California filed a lawsuit in federal court on Thursday alleging labor law violations against a Walmart contractor, the latest in a string of complaints lodged by workers in major U.S. distribution hubs.

In their proposed class action, three employees of Schneider Logistics claim the company devised an “unlawful scheme” to have them work overtime without paying them at overtime rates. The workers also say managers required them to take “voluntary” time off when they preferred to work and failed to give them rest breaks and legal wage statements.

Schneider manages various warehouses around the country that handle goods destined for Walmart stores. Last year workers at Schneider facilities in Illinois and the Inland Empire area of California filed lawsuits claiming that Schneider and its subcontractors shorted them on their wages. The California labor commissioner opened an investigation into labor practices at the warehouses in the Inland Empire and issued more than $1 million in fines to labor agencies that provide workers at the facilities….

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/15/california-warehouse-workers-wage-theft_n_1349211.html?ref=mostpopular

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/535009/thumbs/r-WAREHOUSE-WORKERS-large570.jpg