FWAF has been working on wage theft cases for decadees, and we have seen an increase in the number of cases, where they’re coming from, and how the US Department of Labor (DOL) handles them.
Wage theft cases are widespread across the state of Florida and are prevalent in many industries, especially those our community members work in, including construction, landscaping, food service, and farmwork. We have a long history of a variety of wage theft cases. Oftentimes workers are told that they will be paid for training but instead are made to complete a whole job and are not paid for their work. Many of our cases are in construction, where the people are brought to the worksite to do a job by contractors, but when the contractors are paid, they don’t distribute the money to the workers. When the workers ask for their money, the contractors claim they weren’t paid by the company, but this is often not true.
In the state of Florida, there are very few pathwayss to fight for cases. According to Florida Policy Institute, Florida has the highest rate of minimum wage-related wage theft in the 10 most populous states of our nation. In the past, we could use different tactics
to pressure employers to pay back stolen wages, go through the small claims court system (for cases concerning $8,000 or less), or we could report cases to the Wage and Hour Division of the DOL to help workers recover wages they were lawfully owed. The US DOL and DHS have an established Memorandum of Understanding on enforcement of labor and immigration laws. Florida does not have its own State Department of Labor since it was abolished in 2002, and there are no state agencies to provide support in wage theft cases. Furthermore, most lawyers do not take theft cases due to the low payout. Another tactic FWAF has used in the past is that of shaming the employer, by going to the local news media and exposing the employer and the theft of workers’ wages. This has succeeded in several cases in the past in which the employer agreed to meet the workers at the FWAF office with checks for the back pay owed to the workers. In the increasing anti-immigrant climate in recent years, however, workers have been unwilling to risk exposure to fight for their owed wages.
Immigration Since 2005 and Wage Theft
Because of the lack of options for recourse and their vulnerability to immigration-based threats, undocumented workers are at high risk of wage theft and abusive labor practices and many of these cases go unreported due to fears of retaliation. With the increase of anti-immigrant policies across the state of Florida and now at the federal level, workers have even fewer protections against newly emboldened abusive employers and less mobility to work elsewhere due to E-Verify. We have even had community members report abuses only to quickly take back their reports requesting we do not act on them because the fears of retaliation are so high.
In the past, we recommended some people take their cases to small claims courts, try to resolve through small claims courts, but due to immigration fears and ICE activity outside of courthouses, we have stopped recommmending this method.
One of our cases
In 2019, we began fighting a case against a construction employer who was reported to have been stealing money from his workers. FWAF invited Univision to report on the abuse and despite the media pressure, he never paid back the money. Several years later, it was reported that he committed this unlawful act again without consequences.
Regardless of the odds we face with your wage theft case, we will fight hard for you, connect you to resources, and do whatever we can to advocate for your rights.
