November 7, 2011. Palm Beach Post.
Adrian Pinera, who arrived in South Florida from Mexico in 2001, says he learned very quickly how some employers cheat workers in Palm Beach County. Later that year, he worked for three months for a roofing subcontractor.
“He would pick us up at 6 in the morning and we would have to go somewhere and load materials, but he wouldn’t pay us for that only the hours we actually worked on the roof,” recalls Pinera, now 31, and living in Delray Beach. “If it rained during the day and we had to sit in the truck and wait, he didn’t pay us for that either. He took advantage of us because we didn’t know better.”
Activists in Palm Beach County say Pinera was luckier than some employees, who do days or weeks of work, and don’t get paid at all.
Those activists, who are trying to get a special wage theft ordinance passed, say undocumented workers are more vulnerable to unscrupulous employers because most are afraid to tell anyone they have been cheated. But they say U.S. citizens and other legal residents also get shortchanged.
More than 400 members of local organization People Engaged in Active Community Efforts (P.E.A.C.E.) gathered tonight at the Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church in West Palm Beach, urging state leaders to support wage theft initiatives.
The organization, which includes members of 23 congregations from houses of worship in Palm Beach County, has made wage theft a central issue.
“Wage theft is rampant in construction, where subcontractors simply take money from contractors and don’t pay their workers,” said Adina Heart, a spokesperson for the group. “People who work in restaurants, hotels and people in jobs as nannies or maids are also very vulnerable.”
The amounts that workers are cheated out of vary, some are small and some are much more, says Heart. “But I remember one man who was owed several thousand dollars.”
Earlier this year, Heart said, the Palm Beach County Commission unanimously backed the idea of creating a wage theft ordinance. The ordinance, modeled on a successful measure in use in Miami-Dade County, would have created a vehicle for fast investigation and processing of wage theft claims. The only current way to try to recoup wages leads through the legal system and takes time and expense.
“Most of these victims can’t afford to hire attorneys,” she says. “And we’re talking about people who work all week, don’t get paid and can’t afford to pay the rent and can’t pay their groceries. They can’t wait a year to get this straightened out.”
But the commission eventually tabled the proposed ordinance. Heart said that was because local business organizations and a state-wide group known as the Florida Retail Federation (FRF) opposed it. She said those same pro-business organizations tried to get bills passed during the last legislative session in Tallahassee that would have banned local wage theft ordinances, but those bills failed.
“We have steadfastly held that it is not necessary to create a new level of bureaucracy to deal with this issue,” said Mike Jones, head of the Economic Council of Palm Beach County. “There are remedies available inside state and county law.”
The group invited 17 state senators and representatives to tonight’s meeting, but only state Rep. Irv Slosberg attended. A legislative aide for state Rep. Lori Berman answered questions on her behalf. State Sen. Chris Smith also had a legislative aide in attendance, but the aide did not take questions.
Slosberg said he opposed bills aimed at banning local wage ordinances and would do so in the future.
“Workers have rights,” Slosberg said. “We in Tallahassee should be filing legislation ensuring that wage theft is stopped.”
Aide Abby Ross said that Berman was also opposed to bills banning local wage theft ordinances.
Jones said such cases are now referred to non-profit Legal Aid attorneys who deal with them.
Legal Aid staff attorney John Foley said since March, when the program began, 128 persons have claimed they were cheated by employers. He said his office took 80 of those cases; 13 were settled within 33 days; 38 are pending; and 29 were dropped for various reasons .
The amounts that workers claimed they were cheated varied from $250 to $23,400.
Foley says he can’t compare his work with that done by Miami-Dade County with its wage theft ordinance.
“But this is very time consuming work,” he said. “We are doing this as a favor to the local business community and the County Commission, and if we had another body or two in this office we could do it much more expeditiously.”
Heart says her group will still push for the wage theft ordinance. The County Commission has scheduled a public hearing on the issue for March, but Heart says her organization is trying to get that moved up.
