Fighting for your earnings

Think of your daily routine, wake up, go to work, clock in, have lunch, work some more then clock out. You work hard all week and look forward to payday; it’s a celebration, but what if you were working a full work week and not getting paid what you earned? There would be no celebration for your hard work. Imagine clocking in hours and not getting the money you earned? Sad to report, this isn’t a hypothetical for some workers; this is reality for the workers at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey.

According to the Department of Labor, this government run facility had been paying over 100 employees, 150 to be exact, below the minimum wage. The Department of Labor also stated that the facility also failed to pay benefits and proper overtime.

The workers at the detention facility were supposed to be making “$30.97 per hour” as their job description was; “detention officers”. However, they were given the title of “operations counselors”; even though their duties were the same as a detention officer, this title came with a decrease in pay–$11.29/an hour. When the workers had discovered the discrepancy in their pay they did not take just accept this as a typo and move on. No, instead of having a huge strike or parade to demand more money they acted; Delaney Hall is supplied with workers from a Federal company called the CEC or, Community Education Center, Inc. What they did was file a law suit for justice, and that’s exactly what they got.

In this recent settlement between Essex County, CEC and the Department of Labor a $4.8 million payout was reached to replenish the wages of past and current employees. This recent settlement proves that you can’t garnish someone’s wages and expect them to perform tasks for a higher paying position, it shows the effectiveness of our government, and finally it shows that cutting corners at the expense of the employee will never result in a positive way. A restaurant, a business, a shop, any organization is only as good as the employees; this proves that you should treat them well.