Posted October 30, 20251:58 pm
The stories of workplace woes often sounded the same. Employers were withholding final paychecks. Bosses were paying below minimum wage or refusing to pay employees who worked overtime. Workers were being cheated out of pay. They knew it was illegal However, few knew what happened to them has a name – wage theft.
These stories, told in meetings often in church basements and other places across Greater Cleveland, helped to shape the mission of the Northeast Ohio Worker Center, which was founded in 2019. The nonprofit at the center of a fight against wage theft in Greater Cleveland, focused on getting workers their back pay and holding accountable employers who engaged in the practice.
The worker center has seen tangible results of its efforts. Workers were awarded $100,000 in back pay after the nonprofit helped them win suits in small claims court or file complaints with the Ohio Department of Commerce between May 2024 and May 2025.
The joy of winning often has been tempered by a disheartening reality. Employers can get away with not paying up. Lax enforcement, often caused by understaffed public agencies, is a prime reason, according to Grace Heffernan, executive director of the worker center.
But still there is a sense of victory in that the worker center has helped to raise awareness about wage theft, she said. This includes hosting worker clinics — including for primarily Spanish speakers — and lobbying Cleveland to pass a wage theft ordinance in 2022, which includes banning companies from city contracts if the courts, state or federal government have found that they stole wages from their workers. NEOWC is teaming with the City of Cleveland to do outreach to workers as part of Cleveland’s effort to step up enforcement of its wage theft and other worker protection laws.
“I think we are seeing a shift in consciousness, where workers are recognizing what wage theft is and that there is something they can do about it,” Heffernan said.
Wage theft complaints filed in Ohio have skyrocketed
The worker meetings in church basements were occurring at a time that awareness about wage theft was increasing in Ohio and nationally. Over the past several years, Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton are among the Ohio cities that have also passed wage theft laws similar to Cleveland’s ordinance.
The number of wage and hour violation complaints, as they are officially known, received by the Ohio Department of Commerce have skyrocketed in the past few years. This has coincided with more municipalities and counties passing wage theft laws.
This year the department’s Bureau of Wage & Hour Administration received 2227 complaints as of Oct. 4, about double the complaints received in all of 2022.
Decisions, called determinations, in favor of workers isn’t a given. Of the complaints filed this year, about 45% were rejected or denied. In 2024, about 35% were rejected or denied. Applications can be rejected for such things as not having an employer’s legal name or correct address, Heffernan said.
The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, which has long handled wage theft cases, has seen more clients in recent years. The nonprofit organization has handled 54 wage theft cases so far this year, up more than 50% from all of 2024, said Supervising Attorney Patrick Haney. The worker center saw about 175 workers in its clinics and other wage theft related activities between May 2024 and May 2025, Heffernan said.
How can workers get back stolen wages?
Wage theft victims have a few options to recover back pay. They can file with the Ohio Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Wage and Hour or with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. They can also sue in small claims court or engage a lawyer to represent them in state or federal court.
Each approach has its idiosyncrasies. For example, you can only file certain types of complaints with the state, which include being paid less than minimum wage and not being paid overtime. If you file a minimum wage complaint with the labor department, your award will be based on the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25. (Ohio’s minimum wage is $10.70.) The maximum back wages you can receive in small claims court is $6,000.
Why fighting wage theft can be complicated
Several months had passed, and John Swindell’s last job still owed him back pay. The social worker was convinced that the now-former owner of a Strongsville counseling center had no intention of paying him the $12,000 he said he was owed. Swindell wasn’t having it. He convinced some of his former colleagues that they shouldn’t let the center’s owner get away with not paying them.
In the spring of 2024, he started Googling phrases such as, “What do you do when the owner of the business where you work refuses to pay you?” The worker center’s website popped up, and soon Swindell and three of his former colleagues were meeting with its staff, who told them they were wage theft victims.
Wage theft? Swindell had never heard of it. The worker center showed him and his colleagues how to file in small claims court to recover their wages. Swindell knew he could only file for half of what he said he was owed. Still, he reasoned he would end up with more than if he had to pay a lawyer to sue in state or federal court. Swindell and his colleagues filed small claims suits against Tyrone Sykes, the owner of the defunct Ohio Family Counseling, in Berea Municipal Court. The workers won.
In December 2024, the court ruled that Sykes had to pay Swindell $6,000 with 8% interest and court costs. Swindell still hasn’t gotten his back pay. Signal Cleveland left a message for Sykes at a phone number listed in his name. We will update the story with his comments when he responds.
Swindell said his former colleagues have stopped pursuing what they are owed, now considering it futile. Not Swindell. Last week he filed a lien on Sykes’ property to recover his back pay. The worker center referred Swindell to a Legal Aid Brief Advice Clinic, where he learned how to file a lien and garnish a debtor’s wages.
“I can’t let someone get away with something that is morally wrong,” he said. “Wage theft is like a slap in the face to honest people.”
There is also a sense of betrayal. Swindell knew Sykes before he ran the counseling center and said he had trusted him “because he had always been a cool dude to me.”
Workers often win wage theft complaints but still don’t get their back pay
Swindell’s experience isn’t isolated. A worker can win in small claims court or a wage and hour violation complaint with the state and still not collect back pay. Ohio Department of Commerce data points to how hard it often is for workers to recover the money owed to them. In 2024, for example, the department issued 365 determinations in favor of complaints totaling more than $1.2 million. The department only received enough from employers to pay out about 30% of the total as of Oct. 4. In 2023, the department determined that 367 workers were owed about $791,100, but only about 45% of that amount has been paid.
Heffernan said the experiences of workers the center has helped is similar to what is seen across the state. She said public agencies don’t have enough staff to enforce state determinations in favor of wage theft claims. That contributes to workers winning and still not getting paid.
“In order to increase the collection of money owed to working people, the government would have to decide that it is a problem that they want to fix,” Heffernan said. “As of today, the resources dedicated to protecting working people at the state and federal level are shrinking, not growing.”
The state doesn’t take a lax approach once the Ohio Department of Commerce has determined employers have cheated workers out of wages, according to a department spokesman. After the department makes a determination in favor of a worker, an employer has 30 days to pay up.
“An employer who does not pay the determination will be subject to litigation brought by the Attorney General,” wrote Franklin Freytag, the commerce department spokesman, in an email to Signal Cleveland.
Ignoring a judgment is difficult since the AG has a collections enforcement section, he noted.
The department sent about 290 cases to the AG in 2023 and 2024 and about 250 this year. Signal Cleveland emailed Attorney General Dave Yost’s office regarding how much of a worker’s pay has been collected. We will update this article when they respond.
Instead of suing in small claims court or filing a complaint with the state, a worker may consider having a lawyer sue in state or federal court to increase the chances of recovering wages, according to Haney of Legal Aid. He said a private lawyer may be open to taking minimum wage and overtime violation cases because, if the worker wins, the employer is legally required to pay the worker’s legal fees. This is the case even when the worker is not paying those legal fees up front.
“When an employer is intentionally committing wage theft, it requires legal action to enforce rights,” he said. “Until employers are forced to defend their actions to a court, such employers will avoid addressing the problem.”
Is the current political climate leading to more Latino workers being targeted for wage theft?
Both the worker center and Legal Aid have seen more Latino immigrants using their services, including those who primarily speak Spanish.
Heffernan believes the current political climate, which includes the Trump administration often targeting largely Latino communities and workplaces in high-profile immigration raids, is contributing to these immigrants filing wage theft claims.
“We believe the reason for this jump is because employers have taken advantage of the anti-worker climate, exploiting vulnerable workers with near impunity— especially Latino, immigrant and Spanish-speaking workers,” she wrote in an email to Signal Cleveland.
This year, almost a quarter of the people the worker center has served are Latino. This is a 70% increase over last year.
Haney of Legal Aid believes some employers may view these workers as vulnerable.
“They can be viewed as a target by employers because they don’t think that the workers will access the legal system, or might be scared to access the legal system,” he said. “We try to fill that void and give people access.”
Wage theft can happen to workers of every income level
Mention wage theft, and it often conjures images of low-wage workers being exploited by employers. As the case of Swindell, the social worker, illustrates, wage theft can happen to middle-class workers as well.
Heffernan’s experience is that 1099 workers, or independent contractors, are more susceptible to wage theft than employees. Though they often sit next to employees and do similar work, independent contractors aren’t on the payroll. Employers who are bad actors mistakenly believe this gives them wiggle room to commit wage theft, she said. Many independent contractor jobs are held by those with college degrees or special training. Swindell was among them.
David Truman, a lawyer at Employment Law Partners LLC in Independence, has represented wage theft victims who hold middle-income and high-paying jobs. A company not paying out accrued vacation time at the time of separation is a common form of wage theft for these employees, he said. Under Ohio law, the only way an employer can avoid paying accrued vacation time upon separation is if the business has a policy.
Truman said middle-class or high-income clients often don’t come to him specifically with wage theft concerns. They’re revealed as he negotiates separation agreements for clients. An employer not paying sales employees the commission they earned before being terminated is another example of such wage theft, he said.
Based on experience, Truman suspects wage theft may be underreported among middle-income and high earners.
“I think that people don’t always report these issues, especially if the amount at stake isn’t huge, because they’re afraid of repercussions, including being blacklisted.”
Perhaps such fear is why Swindell hadn’t heard about wage theft in his field until it happened to him. When he left the Strongsville counseling center, he joined some former colleagues working at a counseling center run by someone they knew. They once again became wage theft victims, Swindell said. (He said he has since found a job where he doesn’t have to worry about being cheated out of his pay.) Swindell said he’s deciding what to do about his second incident of wage theft.
“I guess some people will find it kind of humorous how she [the second counseling center owner] got us to join her team and ended up doing the same damn thing – if not worse,” he said.”
Swindell is determined that the joke won’t end up being on him.
Source: Signal Cleveland - What wage theft is and how people in Greater Cleveland are fighting back