A statewide campaign against wage theft--when employers don't give employees their promised pay--launched today with a conference at city hall.
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Mayor David Coss, Attorney General Gary King and Santa Fe County Commissioner Kathy Holian all endorse the campaign, which calls for increased community awareness of the issue. The state legislature passed anti-wage theft legislation in 2009, but the Rev. Holly Beaumont, whose group Interfaith Worker Justice New Mexico is behind the cause, says the law can be easily bypassed.
"There's no way to get around this problem unless workers are willing to file claims," Beaumont tells SFR.
At least two such claims were filed against Santa Fe businesses this year. In February, Manuel Antonio Estévas Rodriguez organized his fellow employees at China Star, a Santa Fe restaurant, and filed a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board over lost wages. Estévas Rodriguez says the restaurant, which filed for bankruptcy in June and recently reopened as Fusion Fire Buffet and Grill, owes him $59,000 in lost payments over two and a half years of work.
"They just closed China Star so they wouldn't have to pay us," Estévas Rodriguez tells SFR through an interpreter. "Even before they closed, people would come in to talk about changing and remodeling the restaurant."
China Star only paid its employees six hours for their 12-hour daily shifts, Estévas says.
Alma Castro, a community organizer with Somos Un Pueblo Unido, says the restaurant fired many employees because they organized. Although China Star denies it owes lost wages to former employees, the NRLB has allowed both parties to work on a settlement which will come any day, Castro says.
Similarly, a former employee of Academy Transmission and Auto Repair says he was short-changed after moving his family from Santa Fe to Albuquerque for a promised raise in his pay.
Carlos Delgado, who worked on car transmissions for the company, says the owner signed a contract with the Department of Workforce Solutions to pay him $14,000 in missed wages about a half a year ago.
"He gave me a payment of $800 [many] months ago," Delgado tells SFR. "Since then I [haven't] heard from him."
