End of the line for rail taxi workers?
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – About 20 employees of a long-distance taxi company have been laid off in Flagstaff, along with another 300 nationwide, and most are still waiting for their final paychecks, according to the Arizona Daily Sun.
Alex’s Transportation, which locally contracts with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad as a taxi service for engineers, started laying off employees Aug. 21, and it still hasn’t paid those workers for their final two weeks of work. Arizona statute requires fired employees to be compensated within three working days, or at the end of the next regular period, whichever is sooner.
In addition, the office employees that continued to work past that date were only paid 65 percent of their final paycheck, said Rachel Ferguson, a payroll employee.
Ferguson quit Sept. 9 after she was given a bad check for the remaining 35 percent of her earnings. No bank or check cashing service in town would accept the check, she said.
Local owner Curt Balducci said the company was “caught off guard” after the railroad canceled its contract, and he simply didn’t have the money to pay the former workers.
“If you don’t have the money, how do you do it?” Balducci said. “Right now we have some serious issues in this company we need to fix.”
Meanwhile, former employees like Tim Redding are facing serious financial problems. The company owes Redding about $900 from his $10-an-hour job; his unemployment check comes to about $174 a week.
“That’s about enough for one car payment,” Redding said.
His cell phone has been shut off because of overdue bills, and he’s concerned other utilities are soon to follow.
But Redding’s biggest concern is that he’ll never see his earnings.
“We basically feel like they’re going to go bankrupt and they’re just holding out so they don’t have to pay any of us,” he said.
Balducci said the company