By Karla Quesada
Today, Republican House members – many of whom are bankrolled by major federal defense, energy and construction contractors – are holding a hearing to roll-back President Obama’s “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” executive order.
The order, signed by Obama last summer, would simply require law-breaking corporations to clean up their act before they receive any more federal contracts.
While the Republican majority will hear testimony from lawyers and lobbyists representing big federal contractors who think that breaking federal law isn’t a big deal, they won’t hear from wage theft victims like me.
I work in the food court of the Ronald Reagan Federal Building, which is owned by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and home to several federal agencies.
Despite regularly working more than 40 hours a week during the past 11 years, I never received a dime in overtime pay. To get around paying me for the extra hours, my boss would claim that I worked at three different stores – even though I didn’t – and issue me three different checks. In total, I am owed over $30,000 in back pay and damages.
I’m not the only victim. Scores of workers who serve food at federal buildings like Union Station and the Ronald Reagan Building work 70-80 hours a week for as little at $6.00 an hour.
That’s why I joined with my co-workers – who are organizing under the banner of Good Jobs Nation – to file two wage theft complaints with the U.S. Department of Labor to reclaim over $4 million dollars in back pay and damages. We also conducted multiple strikes to highlight the problem of wage theft on federal contracts.
The president even honored me as a “White House Champion of Change” because of my leadership in exposing the problems low-wage workers face. But, nearly two years after filing our legal complaints, we haven’t recovered a dime. To add insult to injury, many of us have been retaliated against for being whistleblowers.
I’m grateful to the president for issuing the executive order because it would help workers like me receive swift justice. The order empowers contracting agencies, like the GSA, to hold contractors responsible for monitoring and remedying legal violations when they occur. In other words, if the Fair Pay and Safe Workplace Executive Order had been implemented earlier, I and my coworkers would have already recovered what we’re owed.
I came to this country because I believed America was a land of opportunity – if you worked hard, you would be rewarded and not exploited.
The president’s order honors this promise of the American Dream. “Our tax dollars shouldn’t go to companies that violate workplace laws,” President Obama said shortly before he signed the order. “It shouldn’t go to companies that violate workers rights.” How can Republicans disagree with that and support wage theft?