When Roberto Gomez Alvarez was working at a Mexican restaurant in Wilkes-Barre, he and other workers had to give back a portion of their tips at the end of the night.
“I feel like I have to, you know, say something about it … I was working there for so long,” Alvarez said.
He said something when Mallory Cooper-Kreidler, an investigator with the Wage and Hour division of the U.S. Department of Labor picked up the case at La Tolteca restaurant in Wilkes-Barre.
“These workers, I really had to earn their trust,” she said. “I’m thankful to them that I was able to.”
Her investigation of La Tolteca’s tip practices led to the employer being ordered to pay back $1.3 million in lost wages to 51 employees.
Cooper-Kreidler and Alvarez discussed the investigation in Nanticoke recently, as the Biden-Harris administration announced they have recovered $1 billion in lost or stolen wages.
Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su helped announce the milestone at the IBEW in Nanticoke. Cooper-Kreidler, a Nanticoke native, thanked her for choosing the city as a backdrop.
“This is the town that my family came to when they came to America to work in the coal mines,” she said on a panel with Su. “To see $1 billion wages recovered, it really brings me full circle in the path that I’ve chosen for my career.”
Jessica Looman, administrator of the Wage and Hour Division said $112 million of that billion in recovered wages is going to 33,000 Pennsylvania workers across industries like healthcare, agriculture, food service, construction and others.
She said lower wage, tipped and contract workers tend to be more vulnerable to wage theft.
“Those are all areas where we know that workers need us the most,” she said.
Su said the administration has been working not only to recover back wages, but also make sure employees know they can speak up without fear of retaliation.
“It's a very basic promise of America that everybody should get a just day's pay for a hard day's work. That's what our labor laws are meant to guarantee,” Su said. “We know from the work that we've been doing that that's not happening for every worker in Pennsylvania.”
In the La Tolteca case, investigators found the employer violated the Fair Labor Standards act by making servers and bartenders give a percentage of their tips back to the restaurant at the end of each shift.
Alvarez was one of those employees. He and his wife, Tania Gasper, spoke about their experience during the announcement in Nanticoke.
They haven’t received their portion of the $1.3 million yet, but Alvarez said he is glad he was able to speak up for himself and his former coworkers.
“Finally, justice is here,” he said.
Current and former employees who believe they are owed wages can use the Workers Owed Wages online search tool to claim their back wages or to contact the division’s Wilkes-Barre District Office at 570-826-6316 if they have questions.
