Floridian Landscaping Inc. Mark Thomas
Abusive employers, Unpaid Hours, verbal abuse and discrimination and racism

I have been an employee of a small landscaping company, Floridian Landscaping Inc., for about 6 years. They do landscaping and gardening services to individuals and company in the south Florida area. My job is to drive the trucks of supplies and plants to the worksites in addition to the actual landscaping work.

From the beginning the employers were not very friendly but I put up with it and kept working. But over the years the employers treatment towards me and other employees began to wear on me.

Their workforce of about 25 workers or so is undeniably made up of Hispanic workers with questionable legal statuses, but my grievance is not with them (I'm Hispanic and a legal U. S citizen with proper paperwork). The employers are all white and talk down to their workers with abusive and racist profanity.
This is where my problem began.

Since I am Hispanic and talk with a thick accent the employers, particularly the General Manager Mark Thomas, they bunched me up with the group of workers who can't fight back because of their legal statuses. Thinking that I was another illegal immigrant that they can abuse. But I refused to be verbally abused and stood up for myself. I guess I annoyed my employer and they didn't take kindly to an uppity Mexican who knows his rights.

All this tension between me and my employers has escalated recently. The employers have refused to let me have a raise. I have a load of unpaid hours which my employer refuses to acknowledge, I am not allowed any sick days, vacation days, I don't have any benefits and their hours of work are outrageous. They only pay me and my fellow employees for hours where we have physically worked.in other word we're only paid if we're doing some kind of landscaping work. We are not paid for the hours we are on the road to a jobsite or when we take a lunch break. We are encouraged to work without break as fast as possible.

When I ask for time off my boss, Mark Thomas, is visibly angry and tries his hardest to deny me my time. I have taken this all stride but I finally had enough when I was verbally abused for taking the wrong truck to a jobsite. It was a simple case of confusion, another employee and I accidentally switched trucks. He was yelling a string of expletives at me and I erupted and yelled back at the risk of my job. The employer then threatened me physically and I told him I wouldn't put with it and that I would fight him back.

He walked away without saying a word. He later gave me an empty and phony apology. Since this point on he has treated me with resentment and passive aggressiveness. And recently he has tried to force me out of my job.By this I mean he dropped hints that I was not needed and told me told me that I was not allowed days off.

Also in addition to the verbal abuse many employees have suffered injuries and were not legally taken care. They were given small amounts of cash to brush the incident under the rug.

I am fed up with their abuse of my rights and am locking for some kind of legal help. I can give accurate dates to the instances listed above. I would appreciate any kind of legal help.

Company: Floridian Landscaping Inc. Mark Thomas
Country: USA
State: Florida
City: Palm City
Address: 4908 SW Cherokee Street
Phone: 7722239778

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