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Tuesday May 27, 2003 Page A1
Unpaid workers speak up, and police listen, actAMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Last summer, Ilde Perez rose before dawn every morning to cook chicken and beef fajitas for a taco truck. She spent long, hot days moving around Austin with her boss, who she says promised to pay her $300 for her six- and sometimes seven-day workweeks. But, Perez says, her patrona never paid her full salary. One week, she says, she wasn't paid at all. "It was unjust," said Perez, a soft-spoken 31-year-old from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. Perez's story is not uncommon. Advocates for immigrants say day laborers and other employees like Perez, who work short-term jobs for small-time employers, frequently are cheated of their wages. But unlike most immigrant workers, Perez decided to fight back, taking the unusual step of complaining to the Austin police. Rarer still, police arrested Perez's boss on a charge of theft, in what is thought to be the first case of its kind in Austin. This month, Perez received a $400 check from her former employer. "Our first victory," said Austin police Detective Deborah Acosta. Perez's case is part of a new push by Austin police and immigrant advocates to protect workers' rights. A legal project called the Central Texas Immigrant Worker Rights Center is helping guide the effort. The center also works with the Mexican Consulate. "Unpaid wages is a huge, huge and very common problem," said Maria Elena Hincapié, a staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles. One expert estimates that half of all day laborers nationwide have been victims of unpaid wages at least once. In Austin, police and advocates say the problem has been around for years but has gone largely ignored. Police considered wage claims a civil matter. "There was nothing we could do," said Cmdr. Juan Gonzalez. But the department recently developed a policy directing officers to pursue some wage cases as theft of service, a charge commonly filed when a customer walks out on a check, for example. During the past year, Acosta and other officers have filed about nine theft charges against employers accused of cheating immigrants. No wage claim case has reached a jury -- Perez's case was settled when the employer pleaded no contest, Acosta said. The cases are beset by complications, including language barriers, work arrangements with few or no records, and employers and employees who leave town. Sometimes the workers don't even know their employer's full name. "It's a kind of delicate one," Gonzalez said. "We're treading new ground and going slowly." The worker rights center also has developed other options for immigrant workers to make claims, including filing liens and lawsuits against employers as well as complaints with the Texas Workforce Commission. The center is a joint project of the Equal Justice Center, which does legal advocacy work for immigrants, and Casa Marianella, a refugee aid group. The center's coordinator, Julien Ross, said the center is being overwhelmed with cases, which follow a slow, uncertain process. So far, Ross said, it's frustrating work. Still, the center has achieved results, often by negotiating before filing litigation. From August to mid-May, the center received 145 requests for help seeking unpaid wages. Ross said that the claims total almost $140,000. Of that amount, about $33,000 has been collected. The amount of unpaid wages may be small -- often less than $1,000 -- but the loss can devastate struggling workers, Ross said. Police say they are screening wage cases to identify employers who face repeat complaints. "If we would take all those cases," Acosta said, "it would bog the courts." Neither the worker rights center nor police inquire about workers' immigration status. They say it doesn't affect workers' right to be paid for their work. Still, many immigrants fear contacting the police to make complaints. At first, Perez said, she was scared to go to the police. She also feared no one would listen. "I didn't know that workers had rights here," she said. "A lot of people are going through this, but they're afraid to report it." Perez said her boss promised to pay but then refused, growing angry and accusing her of not doing her job well. "Do whatever you want," she remembers her boss saying, "but I'm not going to pay you." Encouraged by her sister and Ross, she filed her complaint, then checked in regularly as the case progressed. On May 5, almost a year after she had begun cooking fajitas, Perez learned that her case had been settled. It was a surprise, she said, and worth the wait. "I think that it's an example for everyone else, workers and employers," she said. Perez still has a case on file with the Texas Workforce Commission accusing her boss of a minimum wage violation. She said she doesn't expect to win that one. For now, she says, she just plans to cash her belated check.
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