In July 2024, the State’s Auditors of Public Accounts uncovered a litany of issues at the Connecticut Department of Labor (CTDOL). One of the most widely reported findings in this audit, which evaluated the department from fiscal years 2021-2022, was the growing backlog of cases at the DOL’s Wage and Workplace Standards Division, the division tasked with investigating lost wage claims.

“As of May 11, 2023, the Wage and Workplace Standards Division received or initiated 843 complaint cases that were not assigned for investigation,” read the audit. “One case had not been assigned for investigation for 336 days.”

These 843 unassigned or pending cases constituted 41% of the division’s estimated 2000 cases as of May 11, 2023. Both the DOL and the Auditors attributed this growing backlog to two issues, a faulty information system and a severe staff shortage. The staff issue seemed to be the biggest fault for Wage and Standards’ shortcomings; the Division’s nearly 2000 open cases were being worked by 20 wage enforcement agents and four field supervisors as of April 2023.

The backlog has left many with lost wage claims waiting for resolution.

Chad Wilson, a former tattoo artist who has been unemployed since being fired from his job at Spirit Gallery Tattoo in New London, has faced the negative impacts of both the faulty information system and the staff shortage backlog. Having been fired in November 2022, Wilson has engaged in a two-year-long, tooth-and-nail fight with the division to get the compensation he believes he’s owed. 

His experiences with Wage and Standards have given him a jaded view of the division. Instead of fighting to earn employees their unpaid wages, Wilson believes that Wage and Standards employees are instead cutting corners and cutting poor deals with employers to reduce their backlog.

“They’re working with the employers,” said Wilson. “They’re not obeying labor laws, they could care less about what the labor laws say. And what’s crazy is it’s so obvious when you start actually looking into it and you realize what’s going on.”

Wilson presented Inside Investigator with emails, FOIA’ed documents, recorded interviews, and case files to chronicle his battle with the division, and has accused the case managers, lawyers, and supervisors he has contacted of retaliating against him. Now on his fourth appeal of his unemployment claim, and in the process of opening a CHRO complaint against the division, Wilson believes that the employees who worked his case are more worried about playing the numbers game than they are about getting employees what they’re owed.

“You start looking at all the interviews that they do with people, even about this most recent audit, and what they always say is, ‘Yeah, but we bring in a lot of money, we get a lot of money from fines though’” said Wilson. “Why do they keep doing that? Because that’s all they’re worried about.”

Wilson was fired from his old tattoo shop, Spirit Gallery, on Nov. 15, 2022. Wilson said that he and his girlfriend, Marissalyn Marshall, were fired in retaliation after he notified his boss that he was breaking labor laws by classifying the tattoo artists as independent contractors.

“He was misclassifying all his employees as independent contractors and that’s actually a very, very common thing that goes on with tattoo shops,” said Wilson. He estimated that “at least 90%” of tattoo shops in Connecticut are misclassifying their employees. 

“The DOL knows this, the DOL looks at it like, “Yeah, but y’all are just two tattoo artists, and we don’t have the staff to police that,” said Wilson.

Wilson provided recordings of a meeting held by Michael Dodd, one of the two co-owners of Spirit Gallery at the time, that occurred on Nov. 29, two weeks after his firing. During the meeting, Dodd told the employees that they would all need to be reclassified as W-2 employees and that the DOL agreed only to look back over a year’s worth of paychecks. 

“I have to reclassify all the independent contractors as employees dating back to the beginning of the year,” says Dodd. “They were very lenient with me, and you by extension. That is the only way forward, that is the only way we can keep the doors open is to have you be W-2 employees now.”

Dodd said that he was “terrified” of what that would mean for the shop’s tax bill, but that it would not change any of the artists’ day-to-day work at the shop. He also gave his reasoning for firing Chad and Marissalyn.

“There’s been enough shit-stirring and muckraking, and I don’t need to do that,” said Dodd of their firing. “There was capital S something going on and I don’t know what, but there was something going on, and I had to nip it in the bud before it bit me in the ass, which it wound up doing anyways.”

The recordings reveal not only Dodd’s reasoning for firing Wilson but also the DOL’s own determination that Spirit Gallery was misclassifying its employees. Despite this determination, Wilson said that CTDOL Wage and Standards personnel treated him as an independent contractor throughout his lost claims case. Wilson noted that this is not the first time the CTDOL has done such a thing.

Wilson cited a 2022 case that made it all the way to the State’s Supreme Court, Vogue vs. Administrator, Unemployment Compensation Act as an example of the state courts clearly defining the laws regarding how tattoo shops should classify their artists for tax purposes. The case occurred after Mark Sapia, a tattoo artist who worked at Vogue Tattoo and Piercing, a shop based out of Waterford’s Crystal Mall, filed for unemployment but was denied by the DOL on the grounds that he was an independent contractor. 

“After they [DOL] told Mark, ‘You don’t get unemployment, you’re an independent contractor,’ they turned around and told the tattoo shop, ‘Hey, he’s not an independent contractor, he’s an employee,’” said Wilson. “So, they fined the tattoo shop and the tattoo shop took it all the way to the Supreme Court.”

In the final judgment, the Connecticut Supreme Court explained Sapia’s classification using the ABC test. The ABC Test is a litmus test used in courts across the country to identify how a business’s employees ought to be classified, typically for the purpose of unemployment compensation. In order to be considered an independent contractor, an employer must prove before a court that the employee in question meets three criteria (Parts A, B, and C).

In order for an employee to be considered an independent contractor, they must, A) operate freely of their employer’s direction and control, both on paper and in practice, B) provide a service outside of the employer’s usual course of business, and C) be self-employed or running a self-run business in the same trade or service area that they provide for their employer, outside of the work they do for their employer. 

Per the Supreme Court ruling, Sapia had failed to meet the B part of the ABC test, making him an employee instead of an independent contractor.

“The main course of business for a tattoo shop is tattooing,” said Wilson. “So, the judge specifically said tattoo shops in Connecticut cannot have independent contractors performing tattoos.”

Wilson’s working arrangement at Spirit Gallery and Sapia’s at Vogue were extremely similar. Both were told by their employers they could set their own prices but then signed agreements in which they agreed to a set price for tattoos, 50% of which would go to them and 50% would go to their employer. 

Wilson said that when he made the owners of Spirit Gallery aware of the findings of this court case, both he and his girlfriend were fired. 

“I told him, ‘Hey, look, you’re breaking all these labor laws, dude,’” said Wilson. “My girlfriend at the time was working the front desk, and he fired both of us.”

Making his struggle all the worse, Wilson says the story of his firing from Spirit Gallery, as well as the reason behind it, has effectively “blacklisted” him from finding work at other tattoo shops in the area. Wilson said that because other shops structure their business in the same way, none are too keen to hire a rabble-rouser such as himself.

“I’ve been on unemployment and doing little things here and there because they’ve made it to the point where I can’t tattoo anywhere around here,” said Wilson.

Shortly after his firing, Wilson filed for unemployment and filed a lost wage claim, to make up for the hours he wasn’t paid for “down time.” Since Spirit Gallery considered him an independent contractor, he was only paid for the time he was tattooing clients, not time spent at the shop performing other duties, such as consulting with clients, answering the phone and sketching designs.

If Wilson was indeed a wage worker, as the DOL had determined, then he believes he should be paid the same rate for his down time as he was for the time he was tattooing clients, which is $75 an hour. According to Wilson, Todd Startz, the DOL Wage and Standards worker who was assigned Wilson’s lost wage case, believes otherwise.

“He said, ‘Look dude, I know how you think this is going to go,’” recalled Wilson. ‘“You think you’re gonna get $75 an hour for all the hours that you didn’t get paid for? But you’re just a tattoo artist. What I’m gonna do is I’m gonna get you minimum wage.’”

Wilson said that while DOL files reflect that Startz opened his case on Jan. 13, 2023, he had not received any contact from Startz until March, after “leaving messages left and right.” Wilson said that throughout the course of their very first conversation, he knew that his case would not be treated fairly. 

Startz told Wilson that since he was a commission worker (to which Wilson argued, by law, that he wasn’t), the DOL would only look to recoup payment for the average number of hours a week which he was tattooing, not taking into account his hours of downtime at the shop. 

Wilson took a number of issues with Startz’s assessment. For starters, Wilson argued that just because he signed onto a contract that stipulated his agreement to earn commissions, or be an independent contractor, didn’t make him one. Per the Federal DOL’s own website, Wilson is right.

“As a condition to being allowed to work, employers sometimes require workers to sign an agreement stating that the worker is an independent contractor,” reads the site. “Under the FLSA, FMLA, and MSPA, you are an employee if, as a matter of economic reality, your work indicates that you are economically dependent on an employer, and you are an independent contractor if you are in business for yourself. Any label that you or the employer give to the relationship, even in an agreement signed by you, is irrelevant.”

Startz tried to argue that Wilson’s job as a tattoo artist was like that of a masseuse, but Wilson argued that there’s a significant distinction between the two in that masseuses set the length of time for their massages, while tattoo artists don’t.

“I was given the task of doing a tattoo,” said Wilson. “I wasn’t given the task of doing a two-hour tattoo, right? I was given the task of doing a tattoo and at the end of that task, I turned in a timesheet that said exactly how long it took me to do that tattoo. That’s not commissioned, right?”

At one point, Wilson showed Startz the advertisement he had responded to when he applied to Spirit Gallery. In the Vogue case, advertising was cited in the court’s ruling as reason to determine that tattooing was within the company’s usual business practice and that since the advertisements included hours in which artists would be in store, it also supported the court’s argument that artists were employees instead of contractors.

“They weren’t looking for a commission artist, they were looking for a full-time artist,” said Wilson.

“That’s not relevant,” said Startz. “I’m not going down the commission road with you man. You’re commission, you’re not hourly, you’re not getting paid $75 an hour for cleaning, or sitting there waiting for a walk-in to come in.”

Juliet Manalan, Communications Director of the CTDOL, said that although the DOL “aren’t able to speak specifically to Mr. Wilson’s case due to the open CHRO case,” that it is possible for an employee to receive commissions as a W-2 employee. Essentially, Manalan’s statement would imply that Wilson was considered by DOL to be a W-2 employee who received commissions.

Peter Goselin, a West Hartford-based labor lawyer, said that typically an employee should not be paid a separate wage for their downtime, especially if the downtime is unavoidable as a result of the employee being on call.

“Whether wages are owed for downtime generally depends on whether the person was able to use that time for their own benefit,  free from any control by the employer,” said Goselin. “So to answer your question: if the downtime is found to be worktime, the employee must be paid their regular hourly rate. Generally, hours worked in the same job must be paid at the same regular hourly rate, and never less than the Connecticut minimum hourly wage.”

Manalan said that oftentimes, CTDOL staff reclaim minimum wage rates for lost downtime wages at minimum wage due to an inability of employers or employees to procure timesheets, which would prove the amount of time and pay for which employees would be expected to be paid for downtime, if paid correctly by their employers.

“Under the law, an employer is required to pay employees for all hours worked and must ensure that they earn at least the minimum wage for those hours. In the case of tipped wage or commission workers, employees may earn a higher rate per hour, but they may not fall below the state minimum wage,” said Manalan. “All workers should document any agreements they have with their employer, the hours they worked, and what they are paid. If there are ever any issues, these records are important for investigators to prove wages.”

Ultimately, Wilson felt as though his arguments with Startz were going nowhere, and as a result, went down to the Montville American Job Center (AJC) in March 2023 to file a complaint. Wilson said that the front desk staff told him they weren’t aware of how to file a complaint, resulting in them bringing out Mary Toner, a Field Supervisor for CTDOL Wage and Standards.

“She sits me down in the lobby area with everybody around, and she’s just half-assed listening to me,” said Wilson. “So, when I started explaining to her that we’re not commissioned, she says, ‘Hold on a minute, enough, you sound ridiculous.’”

Toner said that Wilson just told her how many hours he got paid for tattooing by dividing his check by $75, meaning he got paid $75 an hour. Wilson, whose whole argument was that he should be classified as a wage worker, not a commission worker or independent contractor, and that his lost wages determination reflects that $75 an hour rate, agreed with her. He then told her that she agreed with him, which she did not take kindly to.

“She got up and yelled at me,” said Wilson. “She said, ‘He [Startz] trained me 22 years ago,’ and stormed off.”

Wilson said he kept trying to argue his point as she walked away, and described his pleas as “loud enough to make it to where she could hear me, but I wanted everybody else in the office to hear me also.” Toner turned to him and told him if he wanted to file a complaint on Startz, he would have to “call Todd and ask him.” 

30 minutes after Wilson’s blowout with Toner, he received a call from Startz, who advised him that “filing a complaint on me at the Montville Office isn’t going to help your case very much.” Wilson said that when he filed a FOIA request later, their records did not show Startz’s call, but his own phone records show that he did. If Toner did in fact tell Startz that he intended to file a complaint, it may have violated the State’s Whistleblower Laws.

After his attempts to file a complaint failed, Wilson found out that the DOL was supposed to give him the State Auditors’ number, because the DOL themselves can’t investigate complaints filed against them. In May 2023, Wilson began working with Maura Pardo, auditor for the state’s Auditors of Public Accounts (APA). He said that he filed his complaint against the Montville AJC two weeks after he started talking with Pardo. Two weeks after filing the complaint, he was then called back into the office for a meeting with Toner and Startz.

“So, I bring two witnesses with me, they were both employees at the tattoo shop,” said Wilson. “Todd tells me, ‘No, you don’t get anybody at the table with you. They can’t come over here.’”

The conversation was essentially a rehash of the previous; Wilson plead his case that he was not a commissioned worker, Toner told him there is no “clear cut definition” of what commission is, leaving it up to their discretion, Wilson said he got the definition from the Federal DOL website, and Startz again voiced his dismissal of Wilson’s occupation.

“Startz says, again, ‘I’m not gonna get you $75 an hour for sitting around drawing tattoos and cleaning and answering phone calls,’” said Wilson. 

Per the Federal Labor Standards Act, both wait time, when an employee is waiting at work while not actively working, as well as on-call time, or any time that an employee is designated to be on work grounds regardless of the time spent actively working, are considered hours worked. It also determines that employees ought to be paid for these hours at the same rate.

“For example, a secretary who reads a book while waiting for dictation or a fireman who plays checkers while waiting for an alarm is working during such periods of inactivity,” reads the Federal DOL’s website. “These employees have been ‘engaged to wait.’”

Wilson said the conversation ended with Startz practically begging him to sue the DOL, so that the matter would be taken “out of our hands.” 

“What do you mean, dude, you haven’t handled this at all,” Wilson recalled saying to him. “At that time, all he had done was send us a spreadsheet that showed our checks and divided our checks by $75 an hour. That’s all he had done.”

Wilson’s complaints with Startz’s handling of his case went beyond the disagreements over how much compensation he would receive, or the differing philosophies behind how the compensation would be calculated but extended to what Wilson perceived as a lack of effort on Startz’s part to do the most basic of obligations. Wilson said that Startz failed to call any of Spirit’s other employees to interview them, and failed to interview him beyond telling him he would receive minimum wage.

“These guys didn’t talk to any of the employees, they went straight to the employer and believed everything the employer said, [the employer] that’s been lying for 10 years,” said Wilson. 

In the recording of Wilson’s visit to the Montville AJC, his co-worker/witness at the time echoed this sentiment. During the conversation, Startz asked her who she was. 

“I’m Arianna Britt, I’ve filed plenty of times and I’ve been ignored, that’s why I’m here,” she said. “I’ve been to this office before.”

Wilson said that when he brought up that Wage and Standards employees hadn’t contacted Spirit Gallery’s other employees, Toner and Startz told him that it wasn’t “his business” whether any of Spirit’s other employees had been contacted and said he was not “the ringleader.” At this point, Wilson turned to the two coworkers he had brought as his witness and told them, “You see? The Department of Labor doesn’t care.” 

This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Toner, who Wilson said then charged at him, making a slashing motion across her throat, and got in his face.

“Enough, enough, enough!” he recalled her saying. “And she says, ‘You need to leave right now.’”

Wilson said that Startz told him on his way out that, from then on, all contact must be done through phone or email, and that if Wilson came back, they would call the police and report him for trespassing. Wilson said he walked out, then walked back in with his phone out to let them know he was recording, and asked Startz to confirm that he would call the police on him if he were to re-enter, what he noted, was a public building. Wilson said a front desk attendant asked Startz whether she should push the desk’s panic button, to which he said yes, prompting another employee to come out front.

“She asked me what’s going on, and I said, ‘Well, this man’s telling me he’s going to arrest me,’” said Wilson. “She says, ‘He can’t do that.’”

She politely asked Wilson to leave at that point, to which he obliged. Two weeks after this meeting, Startz received a letter from DOL Deputy Commissioner Mark Polzella telling him he was officially barred from DOL premises for the next 90 days. Wilson took issue with the way the letter characterized him.

“You continued to be loud and disruptive, using abusive and foul language until a staff member pressed the panic button and several other staff came to the lobby to ensure that you left the building,” read the letter.

Wilson also noted that a ban after one disturbance at the office violates DOL’s own policy. Wilson thought the ban constituted an example of criminal retaliation, and, incredulously, found it to be worded in a way that would only strengthen his case.

“Criminal retaliation is if you file grievances against the government and they somehow retaliate against you, you have to prove first that they knew you complained,” said Wilson. “This letter talks about my complaint at the first of the letter, it talks about my complaint a lot.”

The DOL’s disturbance policy states that only after the third disruptive incident can somebody be banned from DOL premises. Wilson, who photographed a sign posted in the office that outlines this policy, said that they clearly “didn’t go by policy.” He then spoke with Heidi Lane, Director of the DOL’s Legal Division, to challenge the ban. He sent her his recording of the incident, and she agreed that Wilson didn’t use vulgar or threatening language and altered the incident report to reflect that. She did tell Wilson that his return to the office with his phone in hand was a “disturbance.”

“I concur that you did not use profanity during your June 8th visit to the AJC [American Jobs Center],” read Lane’s email. “However, you were disruptive.”

In an email to Inside Investigator, Manalan included the full DOL policy regarding suspensions. The full policy clearly shows that DOL guidelines’ allow staff to immediately suspend a person’s in-person visitation rights to AJCs without prior written warning if visitors meet certain criteria. One such criterion is “verbally abusive or belligerent behavior which disrupts Job Center operations,” which is likely the rule DOL used to justify Wilson’s suspension.

Lane also added at the end that she agreed with the DOL’s ruling, saying “there was no commission structure. Without such a structure, there is nothing for us to enforce.” She said that it was Wilson’s “prerogative,” to negate the DOL’s determination, but that the DOL will “be proceeding based upon the Agent’s analysis with which I agree.” 

“So you kicked me out and said you were gonna lock me up, and I didn’t cause a disturbance then,” said Wilson. “But after you said you were gonna lock me up, then I caused a disturbance, is what she said.”

In the year and a half since Wilson’s last blow out at the Montville DOL office, he has experienced little in the way of relief. He said that he was paid out this March at minimum wage, with interest, netting him one check for $8,316. The other five employees at Spirit Gallery, who themselves quit after Wilson was fired for making them aware of the legal problems with their employer’s pay structure, were paid below minimum wage, at $9 an hour. Wilson said that the DOL pursued this settlement for his former coworkers without their approval.

“The Wage and Standards Division settled with Spirit Gallery out of court, against the wishes of all five employees,” said Wilson. “All five employees said they would not settle for anything less than minimum wage.”

Manalan said that DOL agents’ “first priority is to try to collect the verified back wages owed to each worker,” and put simply that “claimants can accept or reject any settlement agreements.” She said that employees dissatisfied with their settlement can always file a court action, and that DOL investigation information can be used in court.

“Each case is individual so there isn’t a one-size fits all for each investigation and settlement,” said Manalan. “When a complainant files a complaint for unpaid wages, they sign a form authorizing CTDOL to investigate the complaint and approve a proposed settlement.”

Wilson said that “all of the people” he contacted at the DOL suggested he hire a lawyer if he was dissatisfied with the DOL’s findings, but he stressed the fact that hiring a lawyer was not feasible for people in his situation.

“At the time they were paying me $82 a week in unemployment,” said Wilson. “How am I gonna hire a lawyer?”

Wilson provided an email sent on May 12 from Toner to another former Spirit Gallery artist, who asked that her name not be shared.

“Our office has entered into a settlement agreement,” read Toner’s email to the individual. “The original amount based on the hours & dates you provided calculated to $15,654. The attorney representing Spirit Gallery has agreed to pay $10,957.”

Toner then reminded the individual that Spirit closed on Jan. 15, 2023, and the statute of limitations for wage disputes is only 2 years, so attempting to seek private counsel to get a better deal would only net her 2 full months of back pay at best.

“Because they took so long to investigate it, the statute of limitations is up,” said Wilson. “So you ain’t getting no money if you don’t take this!”

“I don’t know what to do because it runs so high up the chain,” said Wilson. “If the whole Department of Labor is running this scam, the whole Department of Labor is so messed up and ran so poorly.”

Wilson also said that since the DOL opened its investigation into Spirit, it has only paid out a total of $60,000 to employees. He said he worked there for only three months and was owed $8,000, while “other people had worked there for years.”

Wilson has since filed three appeals. The first one was filed on December 8, 2023, but was never brought to hearing, as the DOL changed their determination after Wilson opened it, forcing him to file for another.

“They lowered it twice,” said Wilson. “They went from $89 a week, to $88 a week, and then they dropped it down to $82 a week.”

His second appeal was filed on February 9, 2023, and ended up with a DOL Appeals referee first remanding the case to be reopened in an Oct. 10 decision. The referee, Michael Paes, then recalled this decision on Nov. 27, deciding instead to let the DOL’s original determination stand. Wilson appealed again on Dec. 18, with a final decision being issued on April 30, 2024, reopening his case at the DOL. The conclusion of this appeal questioned the reversal of the original decision in Wilson’s previous appeal.

“We are unable to determine from the existing record whether the administrator issued a new decision after the referee remanded the case to the administrator without retaining jurisdiction on October 10, 2023,” read Wilson’s second appeal. “We are also unable to determine why the referee issued a subsequent, different decision with the same case history on November 27, 2023, a month and a half after he issued his original decision.”

Wilson said that the Paes told him after the October decision that he would give Wilson a month and a half to receive a letter of determination from the DOL, but if he couldn’t, then he would revert the ruling back to the original determination.

“He said, ‘I’m giving you a month and a half to get a letter of determination from the Department of Labor saying how much money you’re owed or at least saying how many hours that you’re owed for,’” said Wilson. “They refused to do it. They kept refusing to do it.”

In the decision made on April 30, the DOL’s Employment Security Appeals Division ruled that “the referee [Paes] lacked jurisdiction to issue the decision of November 27, 2023, because he had remanded the matter to the administrator. Accordingly, we must remand this matter to the administrator to conduct further proceedings and to issue a new decision.”

Wilson contends that his efforts during his second appeal were directly undermined by Lane’s insistence on denying his requests for this letter of determination. From Aug. 29, 2023, Wilson began requesting that Lane provide him with a copy of the letter of determination from the DOL’s Wage and Standards Department for use in his first appeal, but was repeatedly denied by Lane, who claimed it held no relevance.

After the reversal of Wilson’s first appeal on Nov. 27, he sent an email to Lane on Dec. 13, 2023, requesting again that he be given his letter of determination.

“My monetary determination appeal was denied on November 27th because I failed to provide evidence of additional wages owed to me,” explained Wilson. “Todd Startz and the Wage and Standards division has concluded that I am owed additional wages than the wages that were reported to Unemployment by the employer. I am seeking a letter of determination from Wage and Standards to support that finding.”

Wilson explained that the appeal deadline was Dec. 18, and that if he was not provided the additional evidence he needed, his appeal would be denied. 

“Mrs. Lane, this is ridiculous that I am having to beg one division of the DOL to share evidence with another division of the DOL,” said Wilson, in the same email.

Wilson tried involving legislators as well, cc’ing in Arianna Tsikitas, Constituent Engagement Coordinator for the House Democrats’ Office. Wilson said she got involved after he tried getting the attention of state representatives to help him. Tsikitas responded back to several of Wilson’s emails, making him aware of her efforts to get the state’s Unemployment Advocate to reach out to DOL’s Wage and Standards Division in an attempt to further pressure them into releasing his letter of determination.

Tsikitas emailed the Unemployment Advocate’s response to her inquiries. The Advocate responded that since Wilson’s wage investigation had been completed, he could use the unpaid wages added to his file to constitute evidence in absence of a determination letter. Wilson expressed that, even with these added, his evidence was incomplete.

“The wages shown on the form are the wages that the employer reported,” replied Wilson. “This does not reflect the wages that I was not paid. Wage and Standards finished their investigation but refuses to give me any evidence of their findings.”

Wilson asked Lane again why, if Startz had finished his investigation, Spirit Gallery would be the only other party able to know the findings of the investigation. He also noted that even the Unemployment Advocate was unable to retrieve them.

“I thought I responded to this earlier,” replied Lane. “I apologize. We do not have a commitment from the employer, as yet. So, we are not sure what, if anything, he may pay.”

Wilson replied by saying that he was not asking for what Spirit Gallery had agreed to pay, but what number of hours the investigation found he had not yet been paid for. 

“Your office told the Unemployment advocacy [sic] that the investigation was complete,” replied Wilson. “If the investigation is complete then what are the hours that Mr. Startz found that I was due wages for?”

Lane was unmoved by Wilson’s pleas.

“As you have been told, the determination by the Wage and Workplace Standards Division has no relevance to your unemployment claim,” responded Lane, in an email dated Dec. 29, 2023.

Wilson ended up submitting FOIAs in May 2024, for both a copy of his original $8,361 lost wages check and a letter of determination. He explained his reasoning as two-fold; he needed the check because the unemployment division calculates an employee’s weekly benefits rate based on the employee’s income. Essentially, if Wilson showed that Wage and Standards had found he was owed those lost wages, which they already had done, then they would be added to the Unemployment Division’s calculation, thus increasing his weekly benefit rate.

“More wages equals more unemployment,” explained Wilson in an email to Lane on Jan. 12, 2024. “You ma’am are a liar by telling me that wage and standards has no relevance to my unemployment appeal. You know that’s a lie and you repeat it anyway.”

“CTDOL follows both state and federal law in conducting investigations to ensure due process for both the workers and the employers,” said Manalan.

Wilson requested a letter of determination because he figured it would show the inconsistency of how Wage and Standards determined his hourly wage as $75 for the hours he worked, and only minimum wage for the hours of “down time”, despite the fact that he was a wage worker and not an independent contractor. Ultimately, Wilson instead FOIA’ed for his investigation files, after talking to Shannon Funk, a former pastry chef and waitress who had faced similar issues with the DOL, who told him that’s what she did.

“She was like, ‘So if you’re trying to get a letter of determination, you don’t even have to get that from them,’” recalled Wilson. “File a FOIA request, and then when you get the paperwork, there’s a spreadsheet, and it shows every week where Todd Startz filled in and said, “Okay he worked for $75 an hour and made this much this week, he made $14 an hour and made this much this week.”

Unfortunately for Wilson, the investigation log didn’t do anything to raise the amount of lost wages he was owed, because the Appeals Division told him that he was unable to appeal a lost wage determination made by Wage and Standards.

“They owed me $8,000 at $14 an hour,” said Wilson. “Think about what that would have been at $75 an hour.”

The Appeals Division found his check to be sufficient evidence, however, to reopen the case so that the lost wages which were recouped, could be added to the calculation of his unemployment.

“The claimant produced a check from the employer which represents “wages” and interest paid in March 2024,” read the Appeals Division’s final decision, on Sept. 20, 2024. “There is no evidence that the administrator or referee considered these wages in calculating the claimant’s weekly benefit rate, because they were paid at a subsequent date. Accordingly, we must remand this matter to the administrator to determine whether the claimant’s back pay award may be allocated to a quarter in the base period and impact his weekly benefit rate.”

Per the DOL’s own rules, Wilson would have needed this new evidence if he wanted to reopen an appeal, and he only had until May 30 to do so. But in a stroke of luck, Wage and Standards decided to keep his case alive, appealing the April 30 decision that reopened his case, in an attempt to get the Appeals Division to shut it yet again. Wilson finally received the evidence he FOIA’ed for on July 30.

“And that’s when they were saying, you know, will you reopen this and change your decision so as to make it where we don’t have to reinvestigate it?,” said Wilson. “The day they answered my FOIA request, I sent an email to the Board of Review, and I said I know that the administrator asked you to reopen this case, I would like you to go ahead and reopen it.”

Ultimately, the Appeal Division sided with Wilson, demanding that the DOL, “issue a new monetary determination in accordance with the claimant’s back pay award.” This victory was short lived, however. Wage and Standards have told him that a “technical issue” has prevented him from receiving the back pay owed to him, and since unemployment only lasts 26 weeks, he had to file another claim, which he did on Dec. 13, 2023.

Wilson said that his second claim, which he said the Unemployed Worker’s Advocate suggested he file, was not approved until this September, nearly a full year after he filed it. Wilson said that since he was fired in the middle of 2023’s fourth quarter, DOL did not consider the hours he worked in calculating his weekly benefit, leaving money on the table that would make him eligible to refile.

“December 13th, 2023, I filed again as directed by the Unemployment Advocacy,” said Wilson. “They told me that since I made money in the final quarter of the year, and it had not been used I could file a new claim.”

His claim was first denied by the DOL because they said he had not made enough money in that quarter to receive benefits. Per the DOL’s guidelines, claimants are eligible for an extension if they have: returned to work and earned at least $300 a week, or five times the weekly benefit rate calculated for their second benefit year (whichever is greater), earned wages from an employer covered by federal or state Unemployment Insurance law, or are “otherwise eligible.”

The DOL finally approved Wilson’s second claim in September of this year as a result of the Appeals Division’s decision that ruled Wilson was owed back pay for the $8,316 in lost wages left out of his original weekly benefit calculation. Due to “technical difficulties,” however, Wilson would not receive his first payment until two months later. Wilson emailed Lane on Sept. 24, asking when the additional funds he was owed would be released to him. In an Oct. 3 email by Anne Rugens, another DOL lawyer she explained the hold up.

“Ensuring the back pay wages are referenced in the wage records and allocated to the appropriate base period quarters involves several CTDOL units,” said Rugens. “We are truly working on this, and hope to have a resolution and conclusion of this matter soon. Thank you for your patience.”

Wilson said that the DOL then explained that the hold-up was caused by the fact that their system misdates back pay; instead of dating the back pay for the week in which it was originally earned, it is dated to the week it’s paid out. Wilson believes that the reason Lane was so resistant to providing him with the $8,316 lost wage determination was because it would expose the misdating error. 

“That’s why Heidi Lane was saying ‘The money that you’re getting from Wage and Standards doesn’t go to your unemployment, it has no merit on your unemployment,’” said Wilson. “Because she knew that it’s not going to say that I got paid back then.”

Wilson said that he finally received unemployment for two weeks in November and got paid $1,220 in backpay.  After that, however, his account was put on hold, because the DOL noted that, even though he made enough money in the final quarter of 2023 to refile, he failed to meet the “back to work” requirement.

“Then they said that since I never went back to work they can’t use the wages from the last quarter,” said Wilson. “They told me that I can’t receive unemployment even though I had wages earned because I had to go back to work to receive unemployment.”

Wilson also noted that, per DOL guidelines, since he filed this claim on December 13 of last year, the eligibility of his claim has exceeded its one-year limit. Essentially, Wilson’s hopes for receiving his second claim have now been nixed six ways to Sunday. 

Even if his second claim eligibility is doomed, Wilson still is owed back pay from the first claim he filed. Since his unemployment was put on hold in November, however, he has yet to receive another dime. In a Nov. 14 email, the Workers’ Advocate told Wilson he would receive an additional $882 in backpay the next week. In a Nov. 18 email, they then told him that a mistake was made, and that he had in fact been overpaid.

“According to Adjudications, the weeks on the current benefit year were processed in error,” read the email. “You have not worked since November 2022 and in order to collect benefits on a second benefit year, you must return to work and make 5 times.”

Wilson was then told that he would have to file another appeal before he could receive payment.

Upon the suggestion of both Pardo and Tsikitas, Wilson has since begun the process of filing a complaint against Wage and Standards via the CHRO for retaliation. This case would not provide Wilson with any conclusion to his wage dispute and is instead focused on the treatment he received from Wage and Standards after making it apparent that he wanted to file a complaint on Startz.

Wilson said that DOL has asked for an extension on their response to his CHRO complaint, giving them until February 18th to either deny, admit or claim no knowledge of Wilson’s accusations against them. Wilson also noted a difference in the DOL’s treatment of him since his CHRO claim was filed.

“Strangely, the DOL is trying to be nice to me now,” said Wilson. “The unemployment office called me and told me that the current issue that is going on with my unemployment is the fault of the legal division, and not the unemployment division.”

Wilson also said that they informed him that although he was overpaid $500, they decided to waive his repayment.

Ultimately, Wilson said that he hopes his story will inform other claimants of their rights, and that he believes the law will vindicate him. He said that while he believed “the system” would help him after he was fired from Spirit Gallery, he was instead “let down” and “retaliated against.” In spite of that, he still maintains hope.

“I still believe in the system,” said Wilson. “I believe in our First Amendment right to speak up when a government department is not doing their job.”

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