Ben Field recalls the day he called in sick to the Taco Bell on St. Paul’s Snelling Avenue. His supervisor demanded that he show up at the job site to prove he was ill. Field declined, explaining that would violate St. Paul’s earned sick and safe time ordinance, which allows workers to accrue paid sick leave.

It would take Field at least two months and a city-driven investigation to be paid for taking a sick day, and he counts himself among the lucky ones.

“There are other people that I’ve worked with who they owe multiple shifts,” said Field, 19, of Minneapolis, in an interview. “Most of the people working there were Spanish-speaking, and the (explanatory sick leave) poster was only up in English. That’s a violation of the law.”

His experience isn’t unique. On Wednesday, a Minneapolis-based labor advocacy organization held a speak-out at St. Paul City Hall, highlighting the cases of 14 fast-food workers who said they had been denied sick pay by the city’s private employers. Organizers said the incidents occurred at nine stores, including a Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy’s, Jimmy John’s and multiple McDonald’s.

“I wasn’t aware I was supposed to get paid,” said Teal Witherspoon-Brown, a 52-year-old grandmother who has worked for three years at a Jimmy John’s in St. Paul and never asked for sick pay. “Nobody told me anything.”

CTUL — the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha — noted that the city has a single investigator assigned to follow up on complaints from workers who believe their employer is in violation of the city’s sick leave mandate. Among other requirements, notice of the law must be posted where workers can see it, in languages that reflect the employee base.

DOZENS OF COMPLAINTS IN 2018 ALONE

The St. Paul City Council approved the citywide earned sick and safe time mandate in 2016, and the law went into effect in the summer of 2017. Since then, the mandate has been tested more than once, triggering investigations by the city’s department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity (HREEO).

In 2018 alone, HREEO reported receiving 38 written and 15 oral complaints. The department has dismissed five complaints and, after consolidating most of the rest, resolved 16, leading to $4,200 in restitution to impacted workers. Four investigations are ongoing.

The complaints were distributed fairly evenly between the manufacturing, retail/hospitality and services industries. A single complaint involved an employer in education, according to HREEO.

UNION: BUILDING OWNERS SKIRT THE RULES

Immediately following the CTUL speak-out on Wednesday, SEIU Local 26 held a second event of its own accusing major building owners of “misclassifying” their lowest-paid employees — their cleaners and janitors — as independent contractors, in part to skirt the paid sick leave mandate.

“They do it every single time they buy a property,” said Javier Morillo, an organizer with SEIU Local 26.

SEIU Local 26 says prominent building owners are buying properties and reclassifying their lowest-paid workers — the cleaners/janitors — as “independent contractors” to avoid paying mandated sick leave and other benefits pic.twitter.com/zkYRzPKcAY — FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) May 22, 2019

CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS WEIGH IN

City council Members Dai Thao and Rebecca Noecker stood alongside the workers at the speak-out, and joined them in calling on the city to beef up enforcement of the paid sick leave mandate. Thao said he would ask the city to include four education and enforcement personnel in the 2020 budget.

If approved, the outreach workers may have to do double-duty, given additional employer mandates on the horizon. St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter signed a $15 minimum wage law last November that rolls out in phases. The first wage increases begin in July 2020, to be followed by annual pay hikes.

They’re not skirting, no one knows it’s a law. Overwhelming, poor compliance is due to lack of awareness, not bad actors. This is a result of insufficient planning, staffing and funding by the city. — Dillon Donnelly (@1wordplastics) May 23, 2019

M.J. Capers-Haywood, a 16-year-old high school student from St. Paul, broke into tears as she recounted being denied sick leave by a hostile Burger King supervisor. “I never got sick time,” Capers-Haywood said. “(She was) really snarky and she told me sick and safe time was only for managers.” Eventually, she said, after a scheduling conflict related to a school practice exam, she was fired from the position over the phone.

Capers-Haywood only recently filed a complaint with the city, which has yet to contact her and open an investigation, she said.

TACO BELL OWNER: ‘WE UNDERSTAND AND COMPLY’

New Hope-based Border Foods, which owns the Midway Taco Bell franchise where Field worked, issued the following statement on Wednesday: “We understand and comply with the sick and safe time ordinance. If a situation does occur where we do not comply, we rectify the situation and retrain our team as necessary. We take the health and welfare of our employees very seriously.”

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With new shops and street improvements, Saturday’s ‘Rice and LarpenTOUR’ showcases three cities Field said for many workers who live paycheck to paycheck, the prospect of taking sick leave and not getting paid is too frightening to chance. And the prospect of complaining and losing your job is even scarier.

“I was getting paid $10.50 an hour when I worked at Taco Bell,” Field said. “A lot of the people working jobs like that don’t have the ability to lose a couple shifts. A lot of the time, it goes unreported.”