More lawmakers tackle rise of wage-theft complaints

— -- Agustin Gonzalez became a casualty of the real-estate bust in 2007 when he lost his construction job in the Florida Keys.

Since then, he says, he has become another kind of casualty: a victim of wage theft.

Gonzalez now works as a day laborer in the Miami area, waiting on street corners or in front of Home Depot for pickup jobs. He says he has been cheated of pay three times, including twice this year on landscaping and construction jobs that cost him at least $2,600.

"I feel like a slave," says Gonzalez, 38, who entered the USA from Panama in 2006 on a work visa that has expired. "I feel like day laborers are just here to be used without respect."

As the economy falters, lawmakers are taking action on the increase of wage-theft complaints.

Miami-Dade County Commissioner Natacha Seijas plans to propose an ordinance cracking down on wage theft next month. The legislation, yet to be drafted, may impose fines or other penalties, she says.

At South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice, at least 20 people report wage theft each week, three times as many as a year ago, director Jeanette Smith says. She says that an ordinance would help.

"You don't have people work like slaves and pay them when you want to just because there's a bad economy," Seijas says.

A June report by the Government Accountability Office criticized the Labor Department's enforcement of wage-theft complaints, calling its investigations "ineffective" and "often delayed by months or years."

In response, Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat, co-authored a bill last month that would freeze the statute of limitations on wage-theft claims during investigations, giving workers time to pursue options such as lawsuits.

"If the government screws up ... the worker should be able to pursue a separate action," Miller says.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said in a news release that the department is hiring 250 more investigators — it had 731 in September of last year — to "refocus the agency on these enforcement responsibilities."

In New Orleans, wage theft is up partly because Hurricane Katrina sparked a building boom that attracted unscrupulous contractors, says Luz Molina, a professor at Loyola College of Law there. The school's Workplace Justice Project is one of the groups that runs a weekly workshop for laborers. It drew between five and 10 workers a week in early 2008 and gets 20 now, she says.

Molina is working with City Council President Arnie Fielkow on an ordinance that Fielkow says is likely to make wage theft a crime, not a civil matter.

"You simply need to pay those people," Fielkow says. "It is unethical, inhumane and morally wrong to do otherwise."

In Florida, Gonzalez has not filed complaints against the employers he says stiffed him. In one case, he says, he was underpaid $2,500 for working more than four months remodeling homes. After he threatened to sue, the employer agreed to pay him little by little and still owes $1,400.

He also says he has given up on collecting at least $130 for a day's work trimming trees. "It's my word against his word," he says.