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Council to talk wage theft


By RICHARD VALENTY Colorado Daily Staff Writer
Sunday, January 15, 2006 11:33 PM MST

Hard labor can be painful and exhausting, but not getting paid for it would be worse. Boulder's City Council will begin discussing a possible ordinance to address nonpayment of wages Tuesday.

Does such nonpayment really happen in Boulder? An employee working year-round and full-time generally has some access to a boss or human-resources official in case of a missed paycheck or other wage-related discrepancy, but it can be a much tougher situation for a day laborer moving from job to job.

Carmen Atilano with the City of Boulder's Office of Human Rights said Friday that her office does receive calls regarding not getting paid for hours on a job.

“I've been here for 10 years, and it's intensified over the past couple of years,� said Atilano.


Isn't it already illegal not to pay laborers? According to the Colorado Wage Claims Act, found in Colorado Revised Statutes 8-4-101 it is, but there was no mechanism in Colorado to get the police to investigate nonpayment of less than $500 until recently.

The Denver City Council in Dec. 2005passed unanimously an ordinance amending its Municipal Code, adding nonpayment of “wages for labor� to its code section identifying what constitutes “theft� of items valued at less than $500.

Doug Linkhart, the Denver Council member who proposed the ordinance, compared nonpayment to other forms of theft.

“If someone steals a wallet, the police can come and arrest you. But if you don't pay (a person), the police can't do anything,� said Linkhart according to a Jan. 3 article in the Los Angeles Times.

The Times piece said the Denver law was an effort to protect “largely immigrant day laborers from fraud.� But Atilano said a Boulder ordinance would give all workers, not just immigrants, opportunities to seek police involvement if earned wages are not paid.

Council member Robin Bohannan said she will speak about the issue during Tuesday's Council meeting. She said no draft ordinance has been written yet, and said it would take a majority of Council to direct City Attorney Ariel Calonne and staff to create a draft ordinance.

Bohannan said she didn't know yet if Council would offer majority support. She said she hopes an ordinance could go before Council for approval “in a month or two� if five members approve Tuesday.

“I would hope that since other municipalities have done this work, that we could get our research done pretty easily,� said Bohannan.

Only three cities in the U.S. have passed similar ordinances - Denver, Kansas City, Mo., and Austin, Texas. The Times article said Austin's day laborers' center has been able to recover 85 percent of unpaid claims, while Denver workers have recovered about 50 percent.

While the Times article said there was “minimal opposition from anti-immigrant groups� to the Denver ordinance, Bohannan said she does expect Boulder's process to raise the issue of immigration.

“But it's (the ordinance) not about undocumented workers, it's about stealing money from those who have worked,� said Bohannan.

If the unpaid worker is an undocumented immigrant, however, it could create a situation where the Boulder Police might be contacting not only an employer who allegedly didn't pay a worker, but also the immigrant and an employer who hired the undocumented worker.

Boulder's Chief of Police Mark Beckner chose not to comment about the ordinance Friday, saying he would want to see the draft language first.

The Denver Daily News on Jan. 3 quoted a spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., saying the Congressman agreed with the Denver ordinance. The spokesperson said employers “should be stopped from taking advantage of illegal aliens,� but also said it should be “as difficult as possible� for employers to hire illegals.

Bohannan and Tancredo are rarely mentioned in the same political sentence, but she also said the Denver ordinance looked good and could be “one way the City of Boulder could go� in drafting its own ordinance.

“We're just looking at what we can do locally to hold employers criminally liable for failing to pay wages,� said Bohannan.

Contact Richard Valenty about this article

at (303) 443-6272 ext. 126 or

valenty@coloradodaily.com.