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After
many years of having their rights violated, employees went to their
employer, Custom Staffing Partners in Gurnee, to ask for
clarification of why their overtime was not being paid and why their
checks frequently did not include pay for all the hours they worked.
They asked for the billing records that Custom Staffing Partners
charged the Waukegan factory where they had been sent to work, Artech
Diversified, Inc---a right which is spelled out in the Illinois
Temporary and Day Labor Services Act to help resolve pay disputes.
Instead of respecting the right of these workers to inspect the
billing records, Custom retaliated and terminated the workers. On
repeated occasions, the workers and community supporters went to
Custom to ask for their jobs back, to see the billing records and to
be paid for the hours owed. Each time, Custom Staffing Partners
refused to respect these rights.
Having
exhausted every recourse, former workers of Custom Staffing/Artech
Diversified will file suit in Federal Court to seek the justice which
both Custom Staffing Partners and Artech Diversified have denied
them.
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The
staffing industry is notorious for stealing workers' wages. In order
to make extra profit, staffing agencies will often charge their
client companies for all the hours a worker performed but then not
include all these hours in the worker's paycheck. For this reason,
worker-leaders forced the staffing industry to agree to include the
right to inspect billing records in the Illinois Temporary and Day
Labor Services Act in order curb wage-theft and resolve pay disputes.
Precisely because workers fear reprisals for requesting the billing
records on the part of their staffing agency employers, many workers
do not request the records.
Custom
Staffing Partners workers did make such a request and suffered
retaliation as a result. Now these courageous workers have called on
staffing employees throughout the region to stand up for their rights
and demand that staffing agencies fulfill their legal obligation to
open their billing records for inspection to resolve pay disputes.
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