City officials and frustrated fast-food workers in Seattle have a message: A Taco Bell, Qdoba or Jimmy John’s that fails to pay workers rightful wages is the scene of a crime.
On July 25, a group of fast-food workers stood on the steps of Seattle City Hall and announced in a news conference that it had filed criminal complaints of wage theft against employers. The workers were joined by Mayor Mike McGinn, City Councilmember Mike O’Brien and Craig Sims, chief of the criminal division for the Seattle City Attorney’s Office — all there to assert that wage theft will be taken seriously.
Wage theft, when employers fail to pay workers what they’ve rightfully earned, was made a gross misdemeanor by a city ordinance in 2011. The National Employment Law Project describes wage violations as an “epidemic.”
Sage Wilson of Working Washington, a coalition of labor and community organizations, said that having the workers file their complaints in the public eye will help drive others to do the same. The ultimate goal, Wilson said, is criminal prosecutions, considering there have been none in the two years since the law passed.
“Doing it publicly is a hard thing,” he said. “But doing it publicly with so much support is going to encourage more people to come forward, and hopefully we can get some accountability.”
Five workers filed criminal complaints with the Seattle Police Department (SPD), and three of them spoke at the news conference. They explained that employers had withheld final paychecks, clocked employees out even as they continued to work or failed to provide breaks.
Caroline Durocher said that at Taco Bell, her manager would clock her off an hour after the store closed, but she would often have to keep working to finish her closing duties, resulting in a loss of roughly $800.
Sims explained what will happen next with the workers’ complaints: SPD will conduct its own investigation, then will forward the case to the City Attorney’s Office for review if police officials feel it is appropriate. The office then will determine whether or not to file criminal charges.
Sims said that although he is confident that wage theft is occurring in Seattle, so far cases have not had enough evidence.
“At this point in time, we have not filed any wage theft cases,” he said.
He said that public outreach is going to be a key component moving forward, both to raise awareness about the law and to help workers understand what is needed to bring a properly bolstered case to SPD.
“The behavior won’t stop until people come forward,” Sims said. “Once people come forward with their complaints, and prosecutions ensue, that’s when the message will be made to employers that this type of behavior won’t be tolerated.”
The complaints come on the coattails of the May 30 fast-food strike, when workers demanded higher wages, as well as a July 11 city council discussion, in which some of the same low-wage workers who filed complaints described grave violations to councilmembers.
Taco Bell employee Durocher also attended a picket at Jimmy John’s on July 30, one of several “make them pay” events organized by Good Jobs Seattle, a movement sparked by the late May strike. People held a yellow banner that looked like crime scene tape, and the picketers targeted locations that have had a significant number of reported violations, Wilson said. The pickets culminated in a march and demonstration at Westlake Park on July 1.
For Durocher, the momentum that seems to be building behind worker’s rights makes it worth it.
“It’s really exciting to feel like people are listening and that we have a voice,” she said.