Sweet and sour
Workers allege bakery owner still owes them thousands in back pay

By JESSICA PUPOVAC and LORRAINE SWANSON
Staff Reporters

The owner of several local bakeries and ice cream shops, famous for the Fat Elvis sundae and other concoctions, has left a sour taste in the mouths of his former employees.

Workers allege that Harold Andrew Singer, part-owner of Sweet Thang Bakeries and Sweet Occasions and More, still owes thousands of dollars in back wages, pushing some of them to the brink of homelessness amidst an unreceptive job market.

The businesses started closing without warning late summer, with the Roscoe Village location closing just last month.

Some of the disaffected workers showed up at Sweet Thang Café, 2142 W. Roscoe, on Thursday, alleging that Singer is still making and selling special-order cakes out of that location, but is dodging their calls and withholding pay.

Mexican immigrants Eduardo Altamirano and Norma Campoverde, who say they are owed a combined $6,500, were among them. They charge that Singer took advantage of them and other Latino workers.

"The only thing I am demanding is that he pays for the work we have done, nothing more," Altamirano, who was employed as a baker, said in Spanish. "There is no way to gain access to talk to him because when we look for him, he's not there. When we call him on the phone, he doesn't pick up."

The workers are being organized by the Interfaith Worker Center, an Edgewater organization that works with low-wage earners to recover lost wages and wage theft, including illegal docking.

"Workers in low-wage industries and immigrant workers are the most vulnerable to experience wage theft," said Adam Kader, director for the Interfaith Worker Center. "Usually English is not their first language, based on the 2,000 workers that we've worked with. The language barrier adds to their vulnerability."

Altamirano says they were paid about $8 an hour to bake bread and pastries and make cookie dough. He and other workers, he said, put in long days, at times working close to 80 hours a week in a house on Lawrence and Damen, in Ravenswood, that made baked foods for retail.

Altamirano said that he worked for Singer for about five months, and the previous owner for four years. As soon as Singer took over, however, he began getting paid sporadically. Workers were not paid on time, and deposited paychecks often bounced, he said.

"It's very frustrating. We have bills to pay and rent, and we have no money to go to the store," he said.

Workers employed at the front of the commercial bakery, who were mostly native born, left the company when paychecks started bouncing. Altamirano said that employee turnover was constant.

"But for us, we couldn't leave so easily, because as we say, we are slow to understand the language, so [Singer] took advantage of that," he said.

Altamirano fears that, although taxes were routinely taken out of his paycheck, Singer might not have been paying them. He said that Singer never gave them application forms to fill out, and never asked for social security numbers or documentation.

"For me, personally, he took out about $130 to $140 every week," he said. "Another worker asked if he was paying taxes and he said he was depositing it in a special account in the bank to report it later on. But he couldn't possibly have reported it, because he never asked for our information, like how many dependents we have."

Singer did not return News-Star's phone calls. Another former employee, Brian Fitzpatrick, who knew Singer for 15 years, said he is still owed $2,400 in back wages for construction work that he performed at Singer's businesses. Fitzpatrick, who is a graduate student at Loyola University, tipped off Interfaith in September when workers began missing pay.

Fitzpatrick said that another man employed at the Ravenswood commercial bakery brought in his wife and son to work for Singer.

"He was being paid regularly, but as soon as his wife and son came in they never got another paycheck," Fitzpatrick claimed. "The family is almost homeless now."

Fitzpatrick is trying to help the former workers become re-employed and was scheduled to help them file a police report against Sweet Thang last Saturday. He said he last spoke to Singer four or five days ago, but that his cell phone number is now disconnected.

Another employee who worked the counter at the Andersonville Sweet Occasions e-mailed News-Star to say that Singer still owed him several hundred dollars in back pay.

On Thursday, after a brief demonstration outside of the Roscoe Village storefront, Altamirano, Campoverde and Interfaith representatives walked three blocks to a private residence where Singer is said to be living. Fitzpatrick, who was not at the demonstration, said he helped Singer move some personal belongings into the home.

After workers and Interfaith representatives prayed in front of the large, single-family residence, the workers placed day-old bread and pastries, and a letter, inside the residence's locked front gate. It was not clear whether anyone was home.

Rev. C.J. Hawking, an ordained Methodist minister and executive director of the Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues, an affiliate of the Interfaith Worker Center, said that the organization has collected about $2 million in stolen wages for low-wage earners.

"What these workers are experiencing is an absolute tragedy," Hawking said. "It's just the tip of the iceberg of what is going on in our city and how the most vulnerable among us are being exploited."