“That’s called wage theft!” said Naxhili Pérez, a former employee of the well-known California restaurant chain, Cheesecake Factory, during a press conference detailing the company’s abuses against its workers.
Naxhili is one of the 591 former Latina cleaning staff, primarily Mexican, listed in the lawsuit supported by the California Labor Commissioner’s Office against Cheesecake Factory. The company is now obligated to compensate workers for unpaid overtime and wages, amounting to approximately $1 million for labor damages.
Credit: Horacio Rentería/El Latino San Diego.
This unprecedented case covers abuses Cheesecake Factory allegedly committed from August 31, 2014, to August 31, 2017.
“During my time working at Cheesecake Factor, my coworkers and I had to work long nights cleaning the restaurant’s kitchen and dining room. We start our shifts around midnight and work until morning, all without adequate food or rest,” said Pérez, who indicated that she worked in the establisment from 2016 to 2018.
“They didn’t allow us to go home…”
She added, citing an example of the abuse: “After eight hours of work, they wouldn’t allow us to leave until a kitchen manager inspected our work. If anything was found amiss, it meant we had to stay even longer to complete additional tasks.”
Next, Yadira Santos shared her bitter experience as a janitor in 2016, recounting, “Once, they made us stay 2 hours after my scheduled shift, and I wasn’t paid. At that time, I had my two twins and two other young children. This robbed my time and money that is meant for my children.”
During the press conference attended by the current Consul General of Mexico in San Diego, Carlos González Gutiérrez, the California Labor Commissioner, Lilia García-Brower, thanked the workers present for “taking all the risks they have taken, for talking about the theft of wages they suffered, for empowering them and not letting the retaliation, the bad vibes, the bad experiences leave them. Because without you we would not have been able to get there now.”
It is worth noting that in an interview with Alor Calderón, director of the San Diego Labor Rights Center (Employer Law Center), he said that “this is a very particular case because not everyone who has a case is resolved through the Labor Commissioner, which comes from the state’s Secretary of Industrial Relations, it is not the most common.”
“What happened here,” the interviewee explained, “is that the state union SEIU has an agreement with certain contractors and employers that they dedicate a portion” (of their profits) “to the cost of creating an investigation office, which It is located within the Union and this is the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund, MTCF”.
He illustrated that in the specific case of the Cheesecake Factory chain, operating in Escondido, Fashion Valley, Seaport District, Newport Beach, Mission Viejo, Irvine, Huntington Beach, and Brea, they entered into “a very informal contract” with individual workers. He emphasized that through meticulous monitoring by MTCF and the staff of the Labor Rights Center, evidence and foundations were found, turning it into a case accepted by the California Labor Commissioner.
Finally, the interviewee indicated that there are thousands and thousands of similar cases and the available resources are insufficient to detect them.
It is worth mentioning that by this means, a call is made to the cleaning workers of the aforementioned restaurant (who were employed between 2014 and 2017) to call (619) 767-2039 and share their specific case.