I work in a restaurant/bar in Texas and am writing on behalf of the cooks there. The owners of the establishment also own other restaurants and bars in the city, and they refuse to pay overtime to any of the cooks they employ. The cooks tend to be relatively uneducated, and I am not even sure if all of them are legal immigrants. Specifically I'm writing on behalf of one cook who has worked over a hundred hours in the past week. I'm not sure if he's legal, but he's been in the US for over ten years (working for these owners almost the entire time) and has taxes removed from his check. It seems if he pays taxes he must be legal. I have tried to get him to contact the Texas Workforce Commission but I think he's afraid of retribution and losing his job. Does he have any rights in getting his OT pay? There are other cooks that I know are American citizens; if they tried to get OT pay and were successful, would that apply to all of the cooks? If they are working here illegally, do they have any way to get their rightful OT pay? I should think cooks are considered blue collar and therefore are due OT under federal law.

Yes, they have the right to be paid their overtime pay but if they refuse to contact the TWC I'm not sure how they're going to accomplish it.

TWC handles only individually filed claims for unpaid wages, and the employer is provided a copy of the claim, along with the identity of the claimant. There is nothing in the Texas Payday Law which prohibits retaliation by the employer.

Claims for unpaid overtime from a similarly situated group of people CAN be handled by the US Department of Labor, and CAN be handled anonymously. There is some protection in the Fair Labor Standards Act for claimants.

The difficulty is that the DOL does not have to accept a claim, and TWC will investigate any qualifying claim.

Also that the US DOL uses minimum wage as a standard. If your rate is higher than that, you'll be getting less money than you actually are owed. Though I grant you, some is better than none.