GALLUP, N.M. (KRQE) – After claiming they weren’t paid for work they did at 505 Burgers in Farmington, a Gallup couple has received a payout after a settlement agreement. But the lengthy legal battle took more than five years – and a lawsuit against the state agency tasked with helping workers.
“Persistence is the keyword. We didn’t give up. We just stuck with it,” Jose “Pancho” Olivas said in a press release.
Jose Olivas and his wife, Sandra Olivas, worked at 505 Burger in 2014 and 2015. They claimed they were paid some – but not all – of their wages. For help, they tried to file a claim for unpaid wages with the state’s Department of Workforce Solutions (DWS).
But Olivas claimed they didn’t get the help they needed. He told a civil court that DWS “refused to investigate his claim” for unpaid wages. He alleged DWS would not handle a claim of over $10,000 in lost wages.
Others made similar allegations against DWS, and Jose Olivas took the lead in a class action lawsuit against the government agency.
The class action lawsuit claimed DWS failed to properly assist a legally blind, Spanish-speaking janitor file a claim for stolen wages. Another janitor, trying to get $15,000 in unpaid wages, ran into a similar roadblock as Olivas, claiming that DWS wouldn’t help because of the value of the claim and because it was several years old, the lawsuit alleged.
In court filings, DWS argued that the department follows “long standing policies and procedures . . . adopted to enable NMDWS to fairly resolve as many valid wage claims as possible” and that “none of the individual plaintiffs . . . submitted a claim form that complied with the policies and procedures of the NMDWS.”
Eventually, DWS did accept Olivas’s claim from 2017 and took the owner of 505 Burgers to court, according to non-profit Somos Un Pueblo Unido, which helped Olivas. Now, the Olivas family is getting $100,000 after a settlement.
“The Olivas showed great courage in choosing to be named lead plaintiffs in the original class action lawsuit against DWS under the Susana Martinez administration. While waiting patiently for their claim to go through the lengthy legal process, they helped ensure other immigrant and non-immigrant workers would have the institutional support they need from DWS to swiftly recoup stolen wages,” Gabriela Ibañez Guzmán, staff attorney with Somos’ Worker Center and co-counsel in the class action lawsuit against DWS, said in a press release.
In a press release about the settlement and wage claims, DWS said:
“We strive to provide education and training to businesses to ensure that employees are paid fairly and to prevent situations like the one Mr. and Mrs. Olivas endured.” Cabinet Secretary Sarita Nair said. “But when prevention does not work, our capable team will pursue these cases for workers, no matter how long it takes.”
DWS says that they will accept wage claims as long as “the last non-payment or underpayment of wages occurred within three years prior to the date of filing” and that forms are available in both Spanish and English at this link. DWS can also help with translation services, their website says, and DWS will take wage claims for unpaid wages totaling any amount.
