They took a summer job hoping to make money to go to college, but students still haven’t been paid years later despite a judge’s order.
A judge ruled one year ago that Trayon Hunter and Alona Bennett be paid almost $10,000 each for work that happened three years ago. But Tecomax has ignored the ruling.
“Honestly I felt betrayed because I was given an opportunity and sold a dream that I was going to be able to make this amount of money,” Hunter said.
Hunter and Bennett graduated Mesquite Horn High School in 2015. They took a door-to-door sales job in an effort to get money for college.
“I felt like for the time that we worked we should have just been able to get the pay that we deserved,” Bennett said.
Tecomax is door-to-door sales that gets people to switch electric providers.
“At the time they signed up these kids and a lot of other kids, they had them sign an independent contractor agreement,” said attorney Matthew Scott.
Over the course of the summer, the students signed up hundreds of families. But never got paid. Bennett then left to Wiley College.
“We went off with nothing,” Hunter said. “I’m not gonna lie, we went off with nothing.”
Hunter couldn’t go to Texas Tech as he planned.
“I had to wait a semester to go to school and I worked two jobs in the meantime,” Hunter said.
Scott sued Tecomax and won a judgment for the plaintiffs.
Judge Ken Tapscott wrote in his conclusion that the “plaintiffs were not independent contractors” and “Tecomax failed to pay plaintiffs… a minimum hourly wage as required by the Texas minimum wage act.”
Tapcott added that “the contract agreement Tecomax had plaintiffs sign was unconscionable as a matter of law and void as against Texas public policy.”
Scott said it’s ridiculous that the company still hasn’t paid up.
“The court has found that the company owes them money and have a judgment against them and they are not paying the judgment, so it’s like they are victimizing them all over again,” Scott said.
Hunter said the company needs to do the right thing.
“Do what’s right not only for me but for the other people I know,” Hunter said. “There were people who worked for them and didn’t get paid.”
The company did not appeal the judgment. Attorneys for Tecomax did not return calls from FOX4.
Scott worries the company will never pay the students for their work.
View original article from Fox 4: http://www.fox4news.com/
