All Ilsi wanted was her hard-earned tips.
At a Subway in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, the 44-year-old worked 11-hour shifts, five days a week making sandwiches, ringing up orders and cleaning the floors. As the store’s only employee, she handled the workload of two or three people, all for $18.07 an hour.
One day, a customer offered a $50 tip, but only if she was guaranteed to receive it.
Ilsi said yes. But when she checked her paycheck, the money wasn’t there.
“I had calculated that I had made around $400 in tips, but when my paycheck came, it only showed $180,” she said. “I thought maybe I had miscalculated. But then the next paycheck came, and it was the same.”
Ilsi, who asked to be identified by her nickname for privacy, is a Guatemalan immigrant who arrived in San Francisco in 2018. With limited English and few job options, work at a Subway seemed like a blessing.
“I was happy that I had a lot of hours,” Ilsi said. “But then I found out I had a right to receive overtime [pay].”
Her fight for fair wages — and her courage under retaliation — helped spark an investigation into wage theft across seven Subway franchises in San Francisco, ultimately leading to a $1.7 million citation against her former bosses.
Christopher Van Buren and Marta Gebreslasie were cited by the California Labor Commissioner’s office late last year. The business partners, who are simultaneously facing a court order to comply with labor laws, did not appeal the citation by Friday, locking in the amount.
Ilsi is one of 81 current and former workers whom state investigators found were underpaid, denied overtime and paid sick leave and prevented from taking required meal and rest breaks between March 2021 and September 2024.
“I never wanted to cause them problems,” Ilsi said. “But I want all workers to be well paid for their work, for their effort.”
An immigrant worker speaks up
Wage theft is rampant in California, where rising inequality and soaring costs of living have made precarious jobs common.
Every year, thousands of workers file claims, amounting to hundreds of millions in stolen wages. A recent Rutgers study found some 1.5 million low-wage workers in California were victims of minimum wage violations in 2023 — more than double the number a decade earlier.
The most vulnerable workers — immigrants, non-English speakers and those with limited legal protections — are often the hardest hit. In this San Francisco case, it’s evident that Van Buren and Gebreslasie specifically targeted newly arrived, monolingual immigrants.
“They wanted people who didn’t say anything, who didn’t talk about anything, who didn’t complain about anything,” Ilsi said.
For Ilsi, the turning point came after a chance meeting with an organizer from Trabajadores Unidos Workers United (TUWU), a San Francisco-based immigrant worker center. When Ilsi asked about the missing tips, TUWU explained her rights.
Together, Ilsi and TUWU visited another Subway location under the same ownership to talk to other workers about their paychecks. The pattern of underpayment was clear.
“I wasn’t even looking into the overtime, or the breaks, or the lunch, or the other things they were doing wrong. I just wanted to know about the tips,” Ilsi said. “The very next day after I visited that store, my boss came and fired me.”
TUWU and its partner Legal Aid at Work shared their findings with the Bureau of Field Enforcement, prompting investigators to inspect all seven Subway locations, interview staff, depose the owners and subpoena payroll records.
Miriam Medellín Myers, an organizer with TUWU, intervened and arranged a mediation with San Francisco’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement, forcing Ilsi’s employer to reinstate her. But it wouldn’t be her last time at City Hall.
Last summer, the Labor Commissioner’s office issued a notice ordering Van Buren and Gebreslasie to halt labor violations. To draw attention to the case, TUWU led workers in a rally on the steps of City Hall, and soon after, the Board of Supervisors passed a nonbinding resolution urging the owners to pay their workers.
Meanwhile, Subway’s real estate arm evicted the couple’s companies, Marvan Enterprises and Van Buren Enterprises, from two locations, with the third in process, court records show.
In January, the Labor Commissioner’s office sought a court order to force the owners to comply with wage laws. Workers’ declarations reveal how the owners and a manager manipulated payroll records to suppress wages, an apparent violation of Subway’s franchise contract.
“The owner-operators and store manager attempted to cover up the failure to pay overtime by manipulating the ADP point of service system by manually decreasing the hours worked, which was captured in the system,” the Labor Commissioner’s office told the court.
In February, Van Buren, who did not respond to a request for comment, denied all allegations in a court filing. The case remains ongoing.
Subway’s corporate office, for its part, is examining the San Francisco franchises.
“We take these matters very seriously and are looking into the alleged claims,” a spokesperson for Subway said. “Our restaurants are independently owned and operated, and franchisees are required to follow federal, state and local laws.”
Wage theft persists in fast-food industry
Despite the citation and lawsuits, workers are still accusing Van Buren and Gebreslasie of underpayment.
“We’ve continued to hear from workers that are still getting paid sub-minimum wages,” said Kim Ouillette, director of Legal Aid at Work’s wage protection program. “It’s just been really disappointing to see that the employer is still persisting with many of their unlawful practices.”
Ouillette said her staff has observed a pattern of abuse at other Subway franchises. In 2023, a court ordered a North Bay Subway operator to pay $1 million in stolen wages. In Southern California, a Subway worker is currently suing for $54,000.
“They try to cut costs and make profit is through labor violations,” Ouillette said. “We hope that this citation is enough to show this Subway [franchise] and all other fast food franchises in the Bay Area that if you do not pay minimum wage to all of your workers, there will be consequences.”
For Medellín Myers and company at TUWU, the Subway case has been a logistically challenging: Workers speak four different languages, requiring multiple Spanish, Nepali and Burmese interpreters at every monthly gathering.
“This case has been really amazing to see how people can organize despite linguistic barriers, and still support each other, even though they’re not from the same country,” she said.
The long road to back pay
Holding wage thieves accountable isn’t easy. Workers often wait years to recover stolen wages. Medellín Myers advises them it can take up to a decade to be fully repaid.
Under state law, the Labor Commissioner’s process is supposed to take 135 days to have a hearing. Yet between 2017 and 2021, the average wait time was 505 days.
To speed up the process, Legal Aid at Work and California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation have teamed up with State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) on new legislation. Senate Bill 310, introduced in February would allow workers to sue their employers for penalties without waiting on state agencies.
For Ilsi, it’s not just about money — it’s about justice.
She now works at another Subway, where she gets meal and rest breaks covered by co-workers. Her paycheck adds up with tips and overtime.
“I’m there because I’ve always liked customer service,” Ilsi said. “[My boss] is very exact in her payments.”
But she knows the fight isn’t over.
“I want them to pay,” Ilsi said. “Not just in money, but by stopping the exploitation of more workers.”
Erika Carlos contributed to this report.
Corrections: Christopher Van Buren and Marta Gebreslasie are business partners, not a married couple. Ilsi was earning $18.07 per hour, not $18.67, when she discovered her former Subway employers were stealing her tips.