Melvin Yee and Matthew Sirolly

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2007

Melvin Yee and Matthew Sirolly

The Wage Justice Center

http://www.wagejustice.org/

Los Angeles, California, United States

Legal Advocacy

The Bold Idea:

As much as 29 percent of Los Angeles County's workforce is estimated to be employed by an underground economy of contractors and subcontractors, where they often work in unsafe and unregulated conditions. The average worker in this underground system earns roughly $12,000 per year. Even though progress has been made to increase the filing of wage claims, these employers perennially ignore the judgments for unpaid wages, unjustly keeping these wages as their profit.

The Wage Justice Center works to provide a systematic solution to protect the basic economic rights of workers and enforce the collection of the approximately $50 million in unpaid wages by these employers, who have previously escaped consequences. By developing new strategies to enforce wage judgments and educate workers, advocates, and the public, The Wage Justice Center will compel employers to redistribute the capital obtained by violating workers’ rights laws. The Wage Justice Center's unique approach of enforcing judgments and creating a permanent enforcement mechanism for wage rights will contribute to the growing national movement of organizations that combat the systemic inequality facing America’s poorest workers.

Biography:

Matthew Sirolly and Melvin Yee met while attending the University of Southern California Law School. Melvin and Matthew were both honored for their dedication while at USC: Melvin received the Outstanding Student Award and Matthew received a Shattuck Award, given to graduating students who have displayed the greatest potential to be leaders in the legal community.

Moment of Obligation: What experiences led to the desire to start your own organization?
MATTHEW: While attending law school in Los Angeles—a city that is ground zero of both worker exploitation and the movement seeking to combat this exploitation—I volunteered and interned at a number of organizations involved in the struggle for immigrant workers’ rights. Among the places I volunteered was a self-help clinic run by a local legal aid organization that provided legal assistance to low-income workers. At this clinic, I witnessed first-hand the frustration of people who worked grueling hours for little pay, spent over a year negotiating the State’s administrative wage claim process, and ended up with nothing but a piece of paper saying they were owed wages that they could not collect. During this time period, I also became aware of the political opposition that government agencies and government-funded organizations face when seeking to be advocates for underground economy workers; this convinced me of the need to establish an organization, which was independent of government funding, to enforce the rights of low income workers.
MELVIN: During law school, I volunteered at an employment clinic where I saw the hardships and abuses faced by workers. I saw how basic employment practices such as minimum wage and even payment of wages were being intentionally violated to maximize profits. Often times, all we could do was hand the worker a packet of materials and send them away to navigate the maze and bureaucracy of the legal system on their own. The egregious nature and the complete dearth of representation for these employment violations set me on a path to create a solution.

Gall to Think Big: What has given you the ability to dream big and take on deeply entrenched problems in the world?
MATTHEW: In the early 2000s, concerned about the eroding economic equality that shadowed the global economy, I decided to leave my job as a database programmer and go law school, where I hoped to find a way to use my penchant for absorbing technical abstractions to contribute to the struggle for greater economic equality. In Los Angeles, I found myself in the middle of burgeoning immigrant workers’ rights movement that has been fighting to bring workers out of the shadows of the underground economy. Faced with the magnitude of the problem of poverty and inequality in the global economy, but inspired by the successes of those in the Los Angeles immigrant workers’ rights movement, I felt that I should do something to cover new ground on this issue close to home, where vast ground remains uncovered. Thus, my partner and I decided to take on an issue that had plagued workers’ rights advocates—the enforcement of unpaid wage judgments. We’ve been encouraged by our success in obtaining back wages over the last year and a half.
MELVIN: My family, especially my parents. My family has provided all manners of support imaginable and still do to this day. They taught me to believe in the way the world is supposed to be and to not acquiesce when it isn’t, and that all those naïve ideas and clichés are not just naïve ideas and clichés, but merely aspects of unrealized reality. Also, the fact that I am not alone. Whenever I attend a social change rally or lecture, speak with others who recognize inequity, and especially when I meet the other Echoing Green Fellows, a wave of confidence, comfort, and a little bit of relief washes over me. Meeting these people inspires me to do more, take bigger leaps and surmount the insurmountable.

New and Untested: What’s innovative about your new idea for social change?
MATTHEW: The Wage Justice Center will establish an effective, systematic enforcement mechanism—independent of government funding and the shifting political pressures—to ensure that workers are paid the back wages they are owed. Government agencies responsible for maintaining labor standards have proven ineffective; they are hampered by political concerns and typically saddled with a conflicted mandate to act both as a neutral referee between workers and employers and a protector of labor standards. As it stands, the burden of enforcing wage rights is largely left on the shoulders of the workers themselves. Unlike government agencies, The Wage Justice Center will be unabashedly partisan, fighting to realize workers’ legal rights. Moreover, unlike many nonprofit legal services organizations, which depend on government funding, our organization will be insulated from political pressure (which, for example, has led to restrictions preventing government-funded legal aid from representing undocumented workers) and solely focused on wage rights. The Wage Justice Center will offer direct representation to all workers and, via unique funding model using fee-shifting statutes, will extract funds to continue and expand operations from the very employers who are profiting off wrongdoing.
MELVIN: The heart of our innovation is to ensure that workers actually receive the money they have earned. Thanks to the struggle of a vibrant workers’ rights movement, workers have been able to obtain judgments for their unpaid wages, but no mechanism exists to enforce these judgments into the money the worker has earned. We will be the catalyst for the mechanism to fill this gap. We are developing the tools and tactics that will be introduced to the workers’ rights movement and their communities to ensure that a permanent mechanism exists so that workers receive their wages.

Seeing Possibilities: What are the most important qualities to be a successful social entrepreneur?
MATTHEW: The courage (or maybe foolhardiness) to take on projects that others have not and to ignore the general wisdom that advises taking a well-traveled path. The dedication and perseverance necessary to work incredibly long hours, without financial reward and often without even a pat on the back. The discipline to meet the goals you impose on yourself, even on those days when you have doubts.
MELVIN: Daring: It's clichéd, but without that risk-taking quality to question and to challenge the status quo, nothing will occur. Balance: Not just between work and play, but for everything in between as well. Besides the fact that it keeps you from burning out, I think it is really important for maintaining perspective. Perspective: Without perspective, not only we will not be able to chart the best path for how to reach the goals we aspire to, but more importantly, we need perspective to choose the personal goals that are right for us as individuals to aspire to.

Which musical artists/albums get you going and keep you inspired?
MATTHEW: John Lee Hooker, the Clash, Leonard Cohen, Miles Davis, Tito Puente.
MELVIN: Anything by the Shins and other Soft, Indie, Breathy, Folky Rock Groups. New Miserable Experience by The Gin Blossoms, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott Heron, Ten by Pearl Jam, Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins and anything by Enya and Deep Forest.

What books do you recommend?
MATTHEW: Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail by Ruben Martinez, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis, Underworld by Don DeLillo, and iby Hannah Arendt.
MELVIN: The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, California Debt Collection and Enforcement of Judgments, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Giving Tree and The Missing Piece Meets the Big O by Shel Silverstein, anything by Agatha Christie, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, and Calvin and Hobbes Anthologies for those Sunday afternoons.

Which websites do you visit often?

MATTHEW:

• news.google.com
• wikipedia.org
• epinet.org
• lasuperiorcourt.org
• civil.lasd.org
• lexis.com
• westlaw.com

MELVIN:

• dailykos.com
• crooksandliars.com

What advice or quote do you keep close to your heart as a social change leader?
MATTHEW/MELVIN: “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” - Martin Luther King Jr.