Every year, it amounts to billions of dollars taken from paychecks of the very lowest earners. I dont want anything extra. Im willing to give more than enough. Im willing to give a hundred and twenty five percent just to be able to get a level playing field. This week on fault lines, we look at what it means to have a job when getting paid what youre owed is not guaranteed. I mean, at what point does it stop . Whos speaking for us . Whos going to speak for us . The us is now a lowwage economy. Tens of millions of people in america are currently working lowpaid jobs many of them are based here, in florida. In this state, one out of every ten jobs is in a restaurant. Weve come here to investigate what recourse workers have when they dont get the wages they earned. In the center of miami beach, davids cafe is a popular cuban restaurant. For many years its owners operated a twin restaurant, called davids cafe two, just a mile away. In 2012, davids cafe two closed down. But there was a problem. Wheres the money, david . woo wheres the money david . more than twenty of its employees said they were owed a combined seventyfour thousand dollars in unpaid wages. Evelio de silva worked at davids cafe two. He says that paychecks from the owner, adrian gonzalez, started bouncing about a year before the restaurant closed. Tony fernandez worked at davids cafe for fourteen years. The workers went to the federal department of labor. Months later they each received a letter acknowledging that they were owed money, but saying that the department would take no further action, and providing a phone number to find a private attorney. Its supposed to be labor department, departamento for employees. But they say, sorry, i can do nothing. Wheres the money, david . no more bounced checks they couldnt turn to the state department of labor, florida doesnt have one. But as of 2010, dade county has a monthly wage theft hearing to settle pay disputes between workers and employers. The hearing is taking place on the sixth floor of this building. It only happens once a month, and for many lowpaid workers in this part of florida, its the only chance theyll get of having their complaints of wage theft actually heard. Alright, were here in the matter of lydia ayala, case number 20131176. Like the people here today, the workers from davids cafe came to present their case. I have the forms of receipt of payment. The owner of davids cafe didnt show up. In absentia, the hearing officer ordered him to pay the workers three times what he owed each employee. You are in fact entitled to the seventyone hours that youre alleging. I am satisfied that you have demonstrated your burden of proof. Adrian gonzalez still refused to pay. Do something for a living what do you do all day . Gonzalez is not alone. Over the last three years, out of nearly ninethousand sitdown restaurants inspected by the federal department of labor, an astonishing eighty four percent were found to have violated wage laws. If you obey the law as a business person, youre at a disadvantage because theres so many people who dont obey the law. Weve had workers contact us for violations of minimum wage laws, overtime laws. Juan carlos is a waiter who organizes an Informal Network of restaurant workers to fight for unpaid wages. And the employers have the upper hand out here. They can steal from you as a worker and face very little if any consequences. Juan helped the former davids cafe workers organize their protests. So at the same time that were involved in this pitched battle against davids cafe, we hear in the news that a few workers at Cafe Versailles at the Miami International airport were arrested for stealing from the employer. Earlier today, seven women were arrested and tonight theyre being questioned by police. Team six reporter Willard Shepard has been staking out the airport all night. These women are still being questioned here. They have been questioned throughout the evening about exactly how they came up with this plan, and exactly how they executed it. These workers were handcuffed, their mug shots were splashed all over the media. They were portrayed as menaces to society. Later tonight theyll be transported downtown to the county jail. The authorities are very quick to act when its one of us, a poor person, a working person, whos committed a crime that affects the interests of the employers. But when the reverse is true, when the employer steals tens of thousands of dollars from workers, theres no one there to enforce the law. And so you will earn less than the minimum wage, you will get robbed of your tips, you will get robbed of your overtime pay, you wont receive pay for all of the hours worked, for example. People have no idea whats it is like to work as a lowwage worker. Consider this the news of the day plus so much more. We begin with the government shutdown. Answers to the questions no one else will ask. It seems like they cant agree to anything in washington no matter what. Antonio mora, Award Winning and hard hitting. Weve heard you talk about the history of suicide in your family. Theres no status quo, just the bottom line. But, what about buying shares in a professional athlete . vo Al Jazeera America we understand that every news story begins and ends with people. The efforts are focused on rescuing stranded residents. vo we pursue that story beyond the headline, past the spokesperson, to the streets. Thousands of riot Police Deployed across the capitol. vo we put all of our Global Resources behind every story. It is a scene of utter devastation. vo and follow it no matter where it leads, all the way to you. Al Jazeera America. Take a new look at news. Al Jazeera America is a straightforward news channel. Its the most exciting thing to happen to american journalism in decades. We believe in digging deep. Its unbiased, factbased, indepth journalism. You give them the facts, dispense with the fluff and get straight to the point. Im on the ground every day finding stories that matter to you. In new orleans. Seattle bureau. Washington. Detroit. Chicago. Nashville. Los angeles. San francisco. Al Jazeera America, take a new look at news. The stream is uniquely interactive television. In fact, we depend on you, your ideas, your concerns. All these folks are making a whole lot of money. You are one of the voices of this show. I think youve offended everyone with that kathy. Hold on, theres some room to offend people, im here. We have a right to know whats in our food and monsanto do not have the right to hide it from us. So join the conversation and make it your own. Watch the stream. And join the conversation online ajamstream. Mr. Gonzalez . Excuse me, mr. Gonzalez . Could you explain why you havent paid your workers . After fault lines began investigating davids cafe for stealing its employees wages, the owner offered to pay his former workers seventyfive percent of what theyre owed. With few other options, the workers agreed. But as of this shows air date, no checks have arrived. Restaurant workers have little power. Nationwide, less than five percent are represented by a union. In florida, efforts to enact wage protections face opposition from a strong business lobby. Among that lobbys successes this year a new law that prevents localities from requiring companies to grant paid sick days. State senator David Simmons sponsored that bill. We do not want to become like a state that overregulates the private enterprise so that it overburdens employers. Because you know who ends up ultimately paying for it . Employees. Thats exactly what happens. You overburden employers with regulations and obligations and theyre not free to treat their employees the way we know they want to treat them, and that is with respect and with as high a pay as they can possibly get by with paying and be competitive. In the majority of cases, employees are, they have a wonderful relationship with their employer and. Low paid workers in florida . Also low paid workers in florida, if you want to call them lowpaid. We have a very, very strong legal system here. But weve met employees through that system and the court has found in their favor. They still havent got their money back. Well, you cant make, one thing is true here in the united states. If the defendant doesnt have any money, you can have a judgment against that person but you cant send them to jail because they cant pay their debts, or dont pay their debts. Thats just a fact of life. The Food Service Industry recorded sales last year of over six hundred billion dollars. It is the largest employer of minimum wage jobs in the country, jobs that can leave fulltime workers below the federal poverty threshold. In nearby fort lauderdale, gloria lewis prepares dinner every sunday for some of the citys homeless population. Im a waitress but ive been cooking from the time i was eight years old. On the islands, you got to cook, im sorry. If youre going to get a husband, you better cook. She and her husband started the effort on their own, buying the groceries and distributing the meals. Recently a church group started helping them. And so what we do, we go here, then we come here, then we go to another spot right over there. Lower income jobs, seven, eight dollars an hour. If you do the calculations and the cost of living, theres no money there. Give me a bottle of water please. Gloria says that for most of the people she feeds, the Jobs Available are restaurant work, if they can get them. Gloria knows what its like. Shes been working in florida restaurants for over 20 years, but she still makes minimum wage. She also estimates shes lost about nineteen thousand dollars in unpaid wages over several jobs. The first place that i worked, i knew the wages were stolen. The problem is you need the job. So its only after im not on the job anymore that i go after these employers. While im on the job, im not going to do anything. Gloria is a rarity. She has successfully sued three of her former employers for wage theft. All three restaurants settled outside of court. When he fired me, then i went for my money. Why didnt you say anything earlier . I need the job. How am i going to say, if everybody else there is accepting the situation, who am i to think that i am going to go in there and change something and still have a job . When everybody has been here forever and they accept it . You really think little old me, especially a little black girl, oh please. Theyll throw me out in a heartbeat. Each of the three restaurants she sued had a different way of chipping into her wages. The third time, they were taking out thirty hours, thirty minutes a day for almost two years, taking out breaks that i never took. And before the manager leaves, he knew that the job wasnt done, but he would ask you, did you clock out . So your job was not complete but you needed to clock out. So i would clock out and stay there to finish the job. Other restaurants also cheated her in smaller ways, but she didnt go through the time and expense to sue. And its not like its only me. Theyre not singling out me. Thats just across the board what is being done. Because ive worked in enough restaurants and it pretty much happened in all of them. If the employer gets, once every three years gets sued, calculate how much money is in his pocket. Its worth the risk. One of the premises that has made america as great as it is, is a court system in which anyone who has been wronged gets a fair day in court. It doesnt go to court. Theres a Settlement Agreement with a gag order. Meaning that i am not allowed to tell anyone else on the job or anywhere that i got my money. So what do i do in my resume in the last ten years, tell the people what did i do for ten years. So there you go, this is why aint nobody doing anything about it. You can compare how employees are in florida, with employees in china or malaysia, or southeast asia, and you come to the conclusion that this is in fact, the greatest place to live and to work. When you earn seven, you know, eight dollars an hour, thats less than twenty thousand dollars a year. Saru jayaraman is the cofounder of the restaurant opportunities center, a Nonprofit Group that works to improve conditions for restaurant workers. The Restaurant Industry as a whole reported just a few months ago, record high profits coming out of this incredible economic crisis. Theyre doing quite well. In chicago, sarus group organized a demonstration outside of the capital grille to protest low wages at that restaurant. The capital grille is owned by darden restaurants, the largest fullservice Restaurant Company in the world. Darden also owns other wellknown chains, like olive garden, red lobster, and longhorn steakhouse. At the protest, we met alfredo galdamez, who washed dishes at the capital grille for a little over a year. He said he soon noticed that the managers were clocking him out before he was done working. Even after alfredo got paid, his earnings were not entirely his own. He showed me darden paid him on a debit card. Was everybody using these cards . Everybody had this . Yes, everybody. The problem is, every time you use it, you are paying. Cards like these allow darden to lower payroll costs. But alfredo says the card charged him a fee when he checked his balance, and a fee when he withdrew funds. Darden along with twenty other Companies Including mcdonalds and wendys is now under investigation by new yorks attorney general for excessive and undisclosed payroll card fees. And now, a techknow minute. Darden restaurants is the nations largest employer of tipped workers. By federal law, employers of tipped Workers Benefit from a loophole in wage regulations. They can pay tipped workers a base wage that today is just thirty percent of the minimum wage. The rest is supposed to be made up by tips. So this is the thing that americans dont know when they eat out. The minimum wage for tipped workers is 2. 13 an hour. Seventy percent of tipped workers in america work at very casual family style restaurants where theyre earning very little money in tips and squeaking by. And so the median wage, even with tips is under 9 an hour. We want to hear dardens perspective on these wages. But theyve refused all of our requests for an interview, so were on our way to the company headquarters, located just outside the city of orlando, and its there that all the companys decisions are made. I think the worst form of stolen wages is the fact that they are spending millions of dollars not on paying their workers a decent wage or providing benefits, but instead on lobbying, both at the state level and in congress, to keep wages at a poverty level. Darden is a leading voice in the National Restaurant association, the lobbying organization that negotiated the low federal minimum wage for tipped workers. Weve come to see if we can speak to clarence otis, the ceo . Back in 1996, herman cain, who later tried to run for president , was the head of the National Restaurant association. Struck this behind closed doors deal, with congress, saying that they the nra would not oppose a modest increase to the overall minimum wage as long as this wage stayed frozen forever for tipped workers. At 2 dollars and 13 cents an hour. Could you bring somebody down, please, because we need to speak to somebody about this. Weve been trying for several weeks. So for the last twentytwo years as the regular minimum wage has continued to rise, the minimum wage for tipped workers has stayed frozen. Basically this industry is saying we dont have to pay these workers at all. They should work for us, but we dont have to pay them at all. You should pay them as customers. With tens of thousands of tipped workers, that adds up to a great deal for dardens magagement. We can actually see that dardens being listed as one of the one hundred best companies to work for, despite the fact that theyve paid out nearly fourteen Million Dollars in lawsuits related to wage theft of their lowest paid employees. Both darden and the National Restaurant association declined to be interviewed for this story. But they have publicly lobbied against minimum wage increases, saying that any changes would slow job growth and hurt americas already fragile economy. President obama and Congressional Democrats have proposed small increases in the minimum wage for both tipped and nontipped workers. But the proposals havent moved far in congress. And just a few minutes from the capitol building, some workers allege that the federal government isnt complying with its own wage laws. This is the Ronald Reagan building, home of dozens of federal agencies, including the department of customs and border protection. At lunch, the food hall fills up with tourists and government workers. The restaurants in this food hall are actually federally contracted businesses, but the workers here claim theyre owed nearly a Million Dollars in unpaid wages. Many workers allege they didnt get overtime pay, some say they got even less than dcs hourly minimum wage of 8. 25. Antonio venagus started working in the food court in 2010. Is this how you treat American Workers . No in may of this year, antonio spoke at one of several oneday strikes in dc to protest wage theft and low wages. The next day, he was arrested, and detained by immigration officials for four days. It could be a coincidence that after three years of serving lunch to Border Agents his legal status was discovered right after he spoke out. But even if antonio had been paid the federal minimum wage, he would have made only about fifteen thousand dollars a year. More than three Million People work full time on this wage but still live in poverty. And since the recession, nearly sixty percent of jobs added have been in low wage work. These are private relationships that do not need to be overregulated by government. The workers dont have power. The Restaurant Industry is the Fastest Growing sector of the us economy. It is the industry thats out there. These are the jobs that are out there. This increasingly is american work. This is the job. Start with one issue education. Gun control. The gap between rich and poor. Job creation. Climate change. Tax policy. The economy. Iran. Healthcare. Ad guests on all sides of the debate. This is a right we should all have. Its just the way it is. Theres something seriously wrong. Theres been acrimony. The conservative ideal. Its an urgent need. And a host willing to ask the tough questions how do you explain it to yourself . And youll get. The inside story ray suarez hosts inside story weekdays at 5 eastern only on Al Jazeera America good evening everyone. Welcome to Al Jazeera America. Im John Siegenthaler in new york. Across the country, americans stop to remember the death of john f. Kennedy 50 years ago. A commemoration ceremony was held in dallas at the site of the assassination. Among the speakers, historian david mccullough. He spoke to us in that time past with a vitality and sense of purpose such that we have never heard before. There are signs that there may soon be deals over Irans Nuclear program. Talks are down to