California cities keeps spending to crack down on crime. What about wage theft?

Guest Commentary written by

Francisco Antonio Callejas Bonilla

Francisco Antonio Callejas Bonilla is a former maintenance worker at the Radisson Hotel in Oakland.

This was supposed to be a worker success story.

In 2018, as a houseman at the Oakland Radisson, I celebrated when an overwhelming 76% of Oakland voters showed up to lift the minimum wage for local hotel workers. But Radisson didn’t respect that law when it took effect the following summer. For nine months, they paid us $5 less than the hourly wage we were supposed to receive. 

In 2020, my coworkers and I organized to file wage theft charges against Radisson. We won, but Radisson never paid it back. Now, we are still waiting for the relief we earned twice over.

We continue to call on Radisson to return the money they’ve stolen. But even more loudly, we’re crying out for the city to enforce their own penalties and protect workers. As hundreds of millions of dollars pour into Oakland’s policing efforts every year and headlines say the city is cracking down on crime, where is the enforcement for this crime? 

Wage theft is a major problem across California and lawmakers have written new laws to try to prevent employers from stealing from their workers. In 2022, workers in California only recovered one-eighth of the stolen wages they reported. Our experience in Oakland highlights the challenges workers face in recovering what they’ve lost – even when the law is on their side.

The 2018 ballot measure, Measure Z, earned a groundswell of support because of local organizing efforts and a deep understanding among our neighbors that soaring costs of living were leaving so many of us behind – particularly immigrant workers like myself. This is how the government was supposed to work: Oakland residents came together to make our voices heard and created change in our communities. 

I was hopeful when the measure passed. I felt exploited as a houseman at the Radisson. My manager expected me to perform work that required two people, and I was constantly running around the hotel to manage orders.

I hoped that hotel ownership would respect the value of my work after Measure Z passed, but months went by and our paychecks didn’t budge. In fact, between 2019 and 2020, Radisson stole more than $400,000 in wages from me and 128 of my coworkers. 

After organizing and filing claims with the Oakland Department of Workplace and Employment Standards, government worked as it was supposed to. When the agency ruled against Radisson in last October, it was the largest wage theft finding in Oakland history.

But in the time since, Radisson has simply ignored the ruling. The company is betting that workers like me aren’t important enough to get the attention of the city. And can you blame them? We haven’t been.

Now Oakland’s Radisson will be closing and converted to housing. What will that mean for us? All the Radisson workers will lose their jobs and the Radisson will try to move on – still without paying what’s owed.

After four years, we refuse to be ignored any longer. 

If Radisson won’t comply with the order, the Oakland city attorney should file a lawsuit and enforce the law. The Department of Workplace and Employment Standards should also add an penalty for each day that the hotel has ignored the ruling and illegally withheld our wages.

This can still be a worker success story.