Ask HN: $45k wages unpaid. What should I do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: $45k wages unpaid. What should I do?

21 pointsantarium7 comments

Hi HN,

Hope I could help some help here. I don't really know where to start, but here the facts:

Our employers started to have troubles to clear pay-check since June 2014. The CEO went to SF to raise money. They promised us to clear all the pay-check no-matter what happen. They gave us some cash to pay rent/eat/reimburse loan these last months. They owe us a total of $45K. The company is a LLC, HQ is in Texas. We work from China. International team (FR, US, CN, KR). For some reasons, the CEO ask us to shutdown the sales until we get some investors [it would be easier to find investors?]. They send us an email few weeks ago saying to start to find an other job, and wait for the money until we get investors. Email saying we could sell everything in the office. We did it.

We have a website getting many quote requests [at least 4 a day] for machines from $200 to $1M. Rank pretty well for some machines on Google. I was thinking about selling the website to maybe get some money from it.

Now I realised that there was many signal for me to quit the company. However, I was blind by the promise the CEO made us, and thought that everything would be OK. Lesson learned, the hard way. We all start to find jobs and try to move on. However it put some of us in many trouble (need reimburse loan, next rent etc...).

If you guys have any advices, I'll be happy to hear about it. My email : antarium [at] fastmail.com

Talk with a lawyer is your best course of action, as a great deal of this will depend on documentation, e.g. contracts, emails; and your relationship with the company.

Best of luck to you.

How much will cost a lawyer?

You would need to Lawyer up, the costs would be set by the lawyer. Each of them have their own costs for their services. You may even be able to get your case or if it is multiple people that were unpaid class action done for free or low cost if you look around.

Just a future suggestion for you in the future. If your employer doesn't pay on time even if it is the first time it is time to leave (from personal experience). The longer you stay the higher the wage and time losses will become.

An employer should always have money set aside for payroll, payroll taxes and pay the employees first. If this is not possible it should be a hint to the employees that the business is failing and will eventually start bankruptcy proceedings or closing up shop.

If your boss does not let you go before they are in this state as they know in well in advance before this ever occurs, it is an even worse sign that their pride and emotions are now running the business.

I am not a lawyer.

Unfortunately, if you are in China, while I'm sure there are some laws that protect you, you aren't subject to all of the American labor laws unless you were qualified for work in America. Texas has strong labor laws that protect this sort of event - including subsidized representation. It is possible that they may still represent you, depending on the situation, and if the company failed to pay wages beyond just simply yourself. If nothing more, they can point you in a helpful direction I should hope.

http://www.twc.state.tx.us

They are specifically around Texas workers of course, however it is also their job to police Texas companies. Ultimately, if indeed you have a US citizen in your work force, you may have a greater leg to stand on.

As others have said, your single greatest asset is representation by a lawyer. If at all possible, I suggest having one of your US counterparts start with the Texas Workforce Commission as I stated before. Have all of the documentation ready, including the contract, emails, and so on.

IMHO, legal action across country lines may not be worth your time unless you're absolutely certain that they have the money, and just aren't giving to you. If they're really broke, a legal win in your favor isn't going to help you much; the defendant will just end up on a payment plan paying you a hundred bucks a month for years and years. It'll be quite awhile before you even recoup the costs of suing them in the first place.

I would just walk away.

I'm not sure a lawyer will be able to put any money in your pocket. If the company ran out of money, it maybe some time,if at all, before they have money to pay you even with a court order.

Lawyer lawyer lawyer lawyer lawyer.

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