Both Travis County and the city of Austin have introduced provisions in recent years to protect workers.
The overview
“If your bike is stolen, who do you call? Probably the police department. But if your wages are stolen, who do you call?” Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza asked, emphasizing the lack of awareness about available resources for working-class individuals.
Garza first launched the county’s Economic Justice Enforcement Initiative in September 2021, partnering with the US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, or DOL. Renewing that agreement in late 2024, the district attorney’s office announced increased collaboration with the federal division of labor to better coordinate joint investigations and enforcement.
Between 2013 and 2020 there had been only four prosecuted cases of wage theft across the entire state of Texas, he said. Since launching the local economic injustice enforcement initiative, Garza said his office has taken on nearly two dozen cases in Travis County over the last four years.
The city of Austin has also taken strides to address worker injustices, passing a wage theft prevention ordinance December 2022.
The city’s policy protects workers under all city contracts, which include goods, services, construction and nonconstruction employment.
“[The ordinance] will help responsible employers, taxpayers and workers in Austin,” said Gary Warren, political director for the Carpenters Union, after the resolution passed. “Law-abiding employers are often undercut by bad actors and can’t compete with those who cheat.”
What they’re saying
Garza emphasized that addressing wage theft is essential to ensuring public safety.
“Neighborhoods and families that are stable, particularly economically stable, tend to be safer,” he said. “When you steal wages from working-class folks, it creates instability, both in that household and in that community.”
Garza noted that his team has been surprised by the breadth of industries from which they have received complaints. Expectedly, the DA’s office has received a fair share of complaints in the construction and hospitality industry, but there have also been complaints from both white-collar and blue-collar sectors.
Wage theft can take many forms, he said. While most people associate it with not getting paid, Garza explained that it also includes misclassification. This can occur when an employer clocks in a worker at a lower-paying job title or misclassifies them in a way that creates a loophole for paying for benefits and overtime.
Types of wage theft include:
- Not being paid minimum wage or living wage
- Not being paid the proper prevailing wage
- Not being paid overtime
- Not being paid at all
- Not being paid the amount promised
- Not receiving final wages in a timely manner
- Not being paid tips
- Not being reimbursed for covering employer’s expenses
- Having unauthorized deductions from paycheck
- Bounced paychecks
- Working off the clock
- Being misclassified as an apprentice or wrong trade
- Being misclassified as an independent contractor
“People need to understand just how widespread the issue is,” Levy said. “... The scope of it is so broad, and there still is no real stigma attached to [wage theft].”
Levy noted that Texas has lower levels of unionization compared to other states, highlighting the need for a stronger “culture of advocacy” to hold employers accountable. He added that resources for those affected by wage theft are limited and that the formal process of filing a wage claim through the Texas Workforce Commission, or TWC, can be cumbersome and slow.
Data from the DOL shows the average time for cases in Central Texas to remain under investigation is around a year and nine months. Additionally, this time frame only includes the time spent by the agency investigating evidence and does not signify the submission of a complaint or end of a case.
Put in perspective
Local hospitality leaders say that managing job titles, descriptions, and pay grades can be a challenging gray area, especially during the industry's often high-volume hours of operation.
Employees can often wear several hats, and different positions receive different levels of pay and may or may not receive tips. Managers on duty are often tasked with ensuring employees are clocked in and out of the appropriate positions during a shift.
For example, within the restaurant and bar industry, servers and bartenders earn a minimum wage of just $2.13 per hour in the state of Texas but rely on tips to supplement their income. In contrast, hostesses and bussers receive the federal minimum wage and may or may not receive a share of tips.
Kitchen staff, such as dishwashers, typically earn a higher base wage. However, bussers and dishwashers, for instance, are often cross-trained and perform multiple job duties throughout a shift.
“I knew exactly what my tip out should be and exactly how much money should be put in my hand right before I walked out the door,” said Katie Babeji, a longtime Austin server and bartender.
Babeji’s words echo a common sentiment in high-risk industries prone to wage theft—that workers often have to advocate for themselves.
Now the general manager of North Austin bar Night Owl, Babeji said that she is extremely meticulous when calculating bartenders’ owed tip money.
An estimated 144,500 leisure and hospitality workers for the Austin metro area, which accounts for roughly 10.6% of the Central Texas workforce, according to TWC data from January.
The second highest impacted industry, construction, mining and skill trades, employs around 87,900 workers, or 6.5% of the current workforce.
The TWC, in partnership with the DOL, offers resources for employers, with access to interactive and online tools to help employers and employees learn more about their rights and responsibilities.
What residents should know
Members of the public, regardless of their immigrant status, can report incidents of wage theft to the Travis County District Attorney's office through the agency’s website or by emailing [email protected].
Additional information on Texas Payday Law can be found on the TWC wage claim webpage. Find a link to a wage withholding complaint form here; filing a complaint is free.
Should legal action be required, groups like the Texas ACL-CIO, Workers Defense Project and the National Employment Law project can assist in free or reduced legal representation or point individuals to additional resources.
