Nathaneal Rodriquez, a restaurant worker and aspiring musician, always had a passion for food. “I grew up in a household where we were all cooking together,” the 33-year-old says. He honed his cooking skills by working in food services during his time in the Marines. When Nathaneal came back to Philadelphia, he worked diligently at several restaurants in the city, all under the same owner.
Capreece Lackey finally got her pardon in June 2013 and her record has been expunged to a clean one, giving her a fresh start. She is looking forward to beginning her healthcare career.Below is Capreece’s story, reprinted from our FY2012 Annual Report:Capreece Lackey is striving for a career where she can help people and provide for her family in a meaningful way. Clean and sober for 13 years, Ms. Lackey has a goal of becoming a Certified Nurse’s Assistant someday.
CLS’ Employment Unit has represented hundreds of restaurant workers over the years, recovering stolen wages and enforcing labor laws. The vast majority of our clients facing exploitation in the restaurant business have been undocumented immigrant workers, although our clients fit many other demographic profiles.Wage theft is a common practice by employers looking to cut costs in this low regulation, low union density industry. We have helped clients with a wide variety of issues, including people who were not paid their last few paychecks, were denied overtime despite working more than 40 hours in a week, had their tips stolen by their employers, had improper deductions from their paychecks, had to pay for dine-and-dash customers, suffered discrimination, and were injured on the job but not given proper medical attention.
Each year, residential Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) and PECO customers are protected from utility shut offs by the winter moratorium. In Pennsylvania, it is illegal for utility companies to shut off services for low-income customers because of non-payment between December 1 and March 31. To be protected
