There’s a variety of ways that wage theft happens. Sometimes employers will refuse to pay outright, but others refuse to pay overtime or misclassify their employees as independent contractors.
Eric Stone
POSTED ON MARCH 28, 2019, 11:22 AM
Last August, Harris County prosecutors filed charges against a homeowner who allegedly refused to pay a house painter. The district attorney’s office charged the homeowner with theft of service.
As the county’s first-ever wage theft case, it was big news. But, it was just one case. In fact, hundreds of Houstonians didn’t get paid for their hard work last year, according to community organization Faith and Justice Worker Center. The organization collected 488 claims of wage theft and other labor violations from across the Houston area between February 2018 and February 2019.
“In this initial report, we wanted to publish the total number of wage theft claims that we received over the last year, which amounts to $1.2 million dollars,” said Silvia Chicas, the Information Manager at the Faith and Justice Worker Center.
She said there’s a variety of ways that wage theft happens. Sometimes employers will refuse to pay outright, but some cases are more nuanced. Some refuse to pay overtime or misclassify their employees as independent contractors.
“Employers who are out to break the law have very creative means by which to steal from working people,” Chicas said.
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Undocumented immigrants are especially at risk for wage theft. Chicas said she’s familiar with this tactic.
“We’ve even had reports of legal permanent residents and citizens just because the employer suspected that they might be undocumented, they issued a threat and said, ‘We’re going to call ICE on you,'” she said.
Bringing the cases to court
Valerie Turner, with the Consumer Fraud section of the Harris County District Attorney’s office, said her office works on going after wage theft violators.
“We’re here to step-in in situations where disenfranchised individuals would otherwise not have any ability to seek assistance,” Turner said in a phone interview.
The DA’s office worked with the Faith and Justice Worker Center on the case against the homeowner who wouldn’t pay his painter in 2018.
“They kind of synthesized the information, passed it on to us, and then we sort of blessed [it] off – ‘Okay, this is a situation where we would definitely consider charges,'” said Turner.
County prosecutors’ new approach to wage theft rests on Texas’ theft of service law – the same law that says you can’t dine and dash or refuse to pay a hotel bill.