Workers’ rights activists gathered at City Hall on Monday, March 4, in a display of support and solidarity for workers testifying about their experience with wage theft in the District. The Wage Theft Coalition, comprised of advocacy organizations D.C. Jobs with Justice and United Workers of D.C., presented the D.C. Council with wage claims amounting to $260,000 owed to a group of forty workers. This is no small chunk of change for the individuals involved, most of whom are day laborers living at or below D.C.’s meager $8.25 minimum wage.
The issue of wage theft continues to harm workers in the District. Tackle Box, a popular Georgetown eatery, recently suffered a loss on three wage theft claims also brought forward with the help of the Wage Theft Coalition. Georgetown Solidarity Committee and the University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative also participated in this action, putting much needed local institutional pressure on employers violating worker rights.
Regrettably, most of the workers who serve as easy targets for wage theft are immigrants, many of them undocumented. This breeds a unique environment of fear in the workplace, preventing many employees from speaking out. Unfortunately, employers are aware of the tacit and sometimes explicit threats they can pose to these workers, who in asserting their rights could be choosing between losing wages and deportation. And because there is little fear of retribution on the part of workers, employers are not forced to be accountable for their actions, including failure to pay workers what they are rightly owed. In the perpetual search of profit, it is unsurprising that firms continue to exploit the most vulnerable members of society.
Workers are understandably unsettled at the prospect of approaching the Department of Employee Service’s Office of Wage-Hour, the District’s governmental body charged with the duty of addressing issues of wage theft. Moreover, in the few cases that are brought forward, many are overlooked because of the high costs associated with bringing the case to justice. Attorney fees and other costs are most often much higher than the small wage claims the case is worth.
The cases presented last week, as well as the changes that the Wage Theft Coalition is proposing alongside supportive D.C. Councilmember Marion Barry, are major steps in the right direction. These include more resources for the Office of Wage-Hour as well as legislation to ensure better protection of workers against wage theft.
D.C. should follow the examples set by cities like Chicago, which passed its own robust wage theft law in January, by cracking down on this practice through stricter wage theft legislation. If an employer’s conscience cannot be relied upon to prevent abusing worker rights, as the case seems to be in the District, then the law must serve as a necessary deterrent.
