McALLEN — A jury Wednesday found that a Mission bakery had failed to pay a former employee who had worked at the business for five years the required minimum wage and overtime, a violation of the federal labor and wages laws, according to court documents.
Rodolfo Jimenez and his attorney, Carlos Moctezuma Garcia, held a news conference Friday at García & García Attorneys at Law PLLC in McAllen, where they answered questions surrounding the 2020 lawsuit. The case was heard in federal court before U.S. District Judge Randy Crane.
“Our complaint that we filed in federal court indicated that he was working 72 hours, which is about over 30 hours overtime, and that he wasn’t getting compensated for that,” García said. “It’s really important to understand that people have rights. In this country, the laws set out the minimum wage and overtime rates.”
According to court documents, the jury ruled in favor of Jimenez and that $33,945 in damages would be paid to him over two years.
When called to seek comment Friday, Alejandra Garcia of Pasteles Blankita, who’s named as the defendant in the original complaint, denied the allegations made against the business and denied that the jury had ruled at all.
Court documents showing the jury’s finding Wednesday says otherwise, however.
Jimenez was hired to work at Pasteles Blankita as a baker in 2015 but would also perform various miscellaneous acts, such as washing cars and maintenance work, court documents stated.
The former baker would work from about 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and would occasionally work on Sundays for two hours and at events on the weekends.
“I probably did more than what was necessary,” Jimenez said in Spanish.
According to Jimenez, he had known about his wages from the start of his employment and it wasn’t until he spoke with his attorney, who explained to him his rights as a worker in the United States, that he understood the severity of the circumstances.
Court documents indicate that Jimenez was getting underpaid as he was receiving $56.67 a day between 2015 and 2018. The federal minimum wage in the U.S. is $7.25. Working 12 hours a week would result in $87 a day if he had been paid minimum wage.
“He liked his job, he liked what he did,” García, Jimenez’s attorney, said Friday. “It’s just that at the end he said ‘I can’t keep doing this’. He needed to get paid and it was difficult for him to move forward because it’s always difficult to talk about something that’s uncomfortable.”
