‘How much teeth do we really have?’: Idaho Labor Department fails to recoup stolen wages

Makena McGinley, manager of Hyde Park restaurant Apericena, had heard the rumors that her fellow employees weren’t being paid. She tried not to worry, she said. Owner Danielle Christine was quick to explain away these stories, and McGinley’s own pay kept arriving right on schedule.

Until it didn’t. By the time McGinley quit, she said, Christine owed her about $7,000 in unpaid wages. McGinley was able to claw back a little more than half of it through her own persistence. She sent texts, wrote emails and made phone calls to Christine and, at one point, Christine’s romantic partner.

But McGinley hasn’t filed a wage claim with the Idaho Department of Labor. She doesn’t see the point. Going to the state hasn’t helped her former coworkers, she said.

“It just is never fruitful,” McGinley told the Idaho Statesman by phone. “Every person goes to the labor board, (but) nothing happens. Danielle has this weird way to be able to get away with it every single time.”

As of September, the Department of Labor had fielded 21 claims from former employees against Christine and determined that at least 11 were owed more than $25,000 combined, according to department documents the Statesman obtained through a public records request. In the 16 months since the first claim was filed, the department has been unable to recoup any of that money from Christine.

This is a common occurrence, according to several former workers from two Boise businesses who spoke to the Statesman. The department cannot stop a business from operating for failing to pay workers, no matter how often the business does so or how many liens the state places on it. The department cannot stop an owner from closing a business and opening a new business in the same location under a slightly different name. It could sue to seize an owner’s personal assets, but it doesn’t.

The department says there is only so much it can do with its resources and limited powers. One expert suggested it’s not making full use of even those.

The result? Idaho workers are cheated of their pay while their employers stay in business.

It’s not clear how many other Idaho workers have found themselves in circumstances similar to the Apericena staff’s. Between January 2020 and September 2024, the Department of Labor received 995 complaints related to unpaid wages. The department told the Statesman that it does not track its overall success rate. In those 995 cases, the department did not know how many times it ruled in favor of the employee or successfully recouped wages for a worker.

The department has placed 12 liens against Christine’s business over unpaid wages, all of which remained active as of Wednesday, according to the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office. A lien is a claim against property, such as a house or car, that can be used to satisfy a debt. The liens restrict Christine’s ability to sell her business until she has paid the department, which would in turn pay out the workers’ awarded funds.

Once the Department of Labor places a lien, it can also look for bank accounts to garnish or business assets it can seize, Darlene Carnopis, the department’s policy coordinator, told the Statesman by email. But the department told one former employee, Connie Bearden – to whom Christine owes about $1,700, the department determined – that it wasn’t able to find a stable-enough bank account affiliated with Christine’s business to garnish those funds, Bearden told the Statesman.

Artie Holmes, the department’s Wage and Hour Program supervisor, told the Statesman that the department had confiscated businesses’ property “a couple times” over the years. Carnopis did not specify what would prompt the department to pursue that action. She said the department was following its “normal procedures” in the case of Christine’s business.

Christine and her attorney, Juniper Cooper-Grivas, did not respond to emails requesting comment for this story. In April interviews with the Statesman, Christine denied that she owed money to any current or former employees and said she was unaware of the four liens against her business at that time.

In the months since, five additional workers have come forward, telling the Statesman that Christine failed to pay them. Even after the Department of Labor determined Christine didn’t fully pay her staff, her restaurants – Apericena and the nearby Bistro d’Helene – continued to legally operate for months until October, when they shuttered amid lawsuits and threats of eviction for unpaid rent.

“That’s one of the things that we struggle with sometimes, because we do the work, but ultimately, the only thing we can do is get those liens filed,” Holmes said. “We always get that question: How much teeth do we really have?”

Legislature sees wage payments as vital, prof says

Idaho law is clear: Every employer must pay its employees all wages due at least once a month on paydays scheduled in advance. If an employee quits, is laid off or fired, all of the employee’s wages must be paid by the next payday or within 10 days of termination. Those employees have the right to request their wages within 48 hours, if they choose.

If an employer breaks these rules, workers can take the employer to small-claims court or file claims with the state Department of Labor. The employer could face penalties over and above the wages owed.

“Wages are pretty important in our system. It’s really, truly the life bread – that’s why we use words like ‘breadwinner,’ ” said John Rumel, a professor of law at the University of Idaho. “It’s not completely surprising, even in a state like Idaho, that tends to be fairly pro-business … that the Legislature would say: ‘Wages, they’re important. And if they’re not paid timely and accurately, then we need to do some things to deter or punish that.’ “

If an employee takes their case to the Department of Labor, the department is responsible for tracking down the employer, trying to bring the employer and the employee to an agreement and, if necessary, instituting a payment plan.

If the department determines that an employee is owed money but the owner doesn’t respond to inquiries about a payment plan, the department can place a lien. That has been the case in several of the claims against Christine, according to department records. Business owners can’t sell a business until all liens on it have been paid off, according to Idaho law.

After 30 days, the department can seize property or money, though it typically avoids taking real estate or equipment from a business, because doing so is expensive and risks displacing the business’s current employees, Carnopis said.

The department did not specify which of these actions it had taken against Christine’s business. But Holmes suggested that the department typically does not go beyond placing liens and that it does not have the power to shut down the businesses of repeat offenders.

“We can write these recommendations. We can levy these penalties,” Holmes said. But such actions won’t always stop an employer from committing wage violations, and they don’t prevent an employer from closing and then opening a new business that isn’t legally responsible for the debt, he said.

No law in Idaho shuts down businesses with too many wage-related liens, Rumel said. Nor does the state view failing to pay wages as a crime – rather, it treats employers who owe their employees money as debtors, he said.

The term “wage theft” has gained popularity in the past few years, but it’s a bit of a “misnomer,” Rumel said. “In a karmic or even a real sense, somebody is stealing from somebody. (But) it’s not easily translated, typically, into an actual crime where the state could prosecute someone.”

Employees face similar struggles across the country, said Daniel Galvin, a politics professor at Northwestern University specializing in workers’ rights.

Between 2009 and 2022, Texas ordered employers to pay almost $100 million in nearly 60,000 cases of unpaid wages, but over 80% of those remained unpaid as of 2024, according to a study by Galvin and others at the Workplace Justice Lab at Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations. The Texas Workforce Commission marked more than 17,000 claims as “closed” or “paid in full” even though workers never received payment, according to the study.

And when labor departments become known for not following up on wage-theft claims with any serious enforcement, business owners can become less fearful of committing wage theft, Galvin said.

“That kind of thing spreads,” Galvin said. “People start to realize they can get away with not paying up.”

Some states collect debts from owners’ personal assets

Trying to recoup workers’ wages from a business’s assets is especially challenging, because businesses can change their identity “at a whim,” said Paul Bowers, the manager of Utah’s Office of State Debt Collection.

“If you have a company that’s liable for a debt, all you’ve got to do is shut down the company, and then you can open another company under a slightly different name, and that new company isn’t liable for the previous debt,” he said.

Under Utah law, though, the owner of a limited liability company – like the company, La Bonte Brands, that owns Christine’s restaurants in Idaho – can be held personally responsible for failing to pay its employees.

“Here in Utah, having an LLC … means limited liability. It does not mean no liability,” Bowers said. In practice, that allows the state’s department of labor to place liens not just on the offending business, but on its owners’ personal property.

Washington State’s Department of Labor and Industries is able to do the same if an individual employer is found to be liable, said Jeff Mayor, a spokesperson for the department.

In Idaho, LLCs do not shield their owners from liability if they cause the business to break the law – meaning that if the Department of Labor found an LLC owner had violated wage laws, it could place a lien on that owner’s personal assets, Rumel said. Idaho law also blocks a business from closing and reopening under a similar name to avoid paying the debts and wages owed by its predecessor, he said.

Rumel said he believes the department has the power to go after a business owner’s personal assets in this situation, but whether it chooses to “is a different answer.”

Carnopis, though, said that to go after an owner’s personal assets, the department would have to sue – and it lacks the resources to do so. She did not respond to a question about whether the department has ever sought these resources from the Legislature.

Lawsuits must start within two years over completely unpaid wages, and within one year for partially unpaid wages, Rumel said.

The Idaho Department of Labor has placed liens against Apericena and Christine’s company, La Bonte Brands, but not against Christine’s personal assets, Carnopis said.

Galvin said studies show that the two ways states can deter employers from committing wage theft are increasing the penalties for noncompliance and increasing the probability of detection. These forms of deterrence can come through stronger legislation, higher penalties, hiring more investigators and creating more proactive, strategic enforcement processes.

Employees wait for payment for months – or years

Former employees’ long waits for wages have led to feelings of frustration and powerlessness. Former Apericena server Chanie Moser remains unpaid eight months after the department awarded her nearly $1,000.

Several of Christine’s former employees stress that they just want to get their pay.

“I just want the money that is owed to me that I worked for, and to be done, having washed my hands of anything to do with (Christine),” McGinley said. “I’m not out to get her. I’m not trying to ruin her business. I’m not trying to ruin her life. I literally just want $2,800.”

For the former employees of Hyde House – an unconnected restaurant in the same location as Apericena that closed in 2022, leaving about 15 staff members with unpaid wages, the Statesman previously reported – these are familiar sentiments. The Statesman spoke with five former employees of that restaurant who attempted to recoup missing wages through the Department of Labor. More than two years later, none had received payment.

Hyde House servers Michael Engelman and Safije LaPointe, both 18 at the time the business closed, told the Statesman recently that they hoped the Department of Labor could get Hyde House owner Cynthia Sauer to pay the combined $1,800 they were owed.

“We thought, ‘We’re going to go to the Department of Labor and get it figured out, and everything should be good,’ ” Engelman said by phone. “But that’s not what happened. We went to the Department of Labor, and they pretty much told us, ‘Sorry.’ “

The pair called the department nearly every day for weeks trying to resolve their cases, Engelman said.

“They honestly didn’t care. They had no sympathy. They heard what we had to say, and they said, ‘Not worth it,’ ” he said. “That’s how it felt.”

Engelman said he had to cover rent with money he received through an education grant he had set aside for classes at the College of Western Idaho.

A records specialist with the department told LaPointe in emails shared with the Statesman that the department couldn’t do much for her and Engelman. The department had sent their cases to its internal collections enforcement unit, she said, and they would have to wait until the owner reached out.

The pair expressed concern that the owner, who had closed previous businesses under similar circumstances, would do the same thing again.

“How can I do something so that she doesn’t do this to anyone else?” LaPointe asked in an email to the department sent six months after Hyde House closed.

“Last information I had is she moved to Alaska,” Caroline Houston, a Department of Labor records specialist, responded in 2022. “I hope someone can finally contact her.”

The department told the Idaho Statesman in November that it had no additional information on Sauer’s case.

Sauer has a LinkedIn page under a different name that says she has been working in Nampa since 2023. Reached Thursday, she declined to comment.

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