“I’d stopped checking my pay stubs. She sat down with me and a shoebox of them and showed me what the numbers said. I wish I’d called months earlier.”
Marcus T.Banquet server
Employment lawyer, New Orleans
You clocked in. They still owe you.
I’m Ondine. I work for the person who got shorted, fired or pushed out, and never for the company.
Tell me what happened. I’ll tell you straight whether the law is on your side, and what I’d do next.
Ondine Arceneaux
Employment attorney
Ondine Arceneaux
Employment attorney, New Orleans
I work for the person who got shorted, fired or pushed out, and never for the company.
My mother cleaned rooms at a Canal Street hotel, and I learned early that a job is also a set of promises: a rate, a schedule, a way you’ll be treated. When one of them breaks, most people can’t tell whether the law cares.
I can. I practice from a small office on Magazine Street and keep the practice small, so every client gets me and not a handoff. That means unpaid wages and overtime, firings that don’t add up, and discrimination or harassment at work.
New Orleans runs on people who work nights, tips and seasons: kitchens, hotels, the port, hospitals, festivals. Those are the people I’m here for.
What I take
- Unpaid wages and overtime
- Firing and retaliation
- Discrimination and harassment
- Severance and exit papers
Before you call
What the first call is like
You tell it your way, start to finish, and I mostly listen. Then I ask for dates: when you started, when things changed, when you were paid, when you were told. Dates are most of employment law.
The best thing I can give someone on the first call is an honest number, even when it’s a small one.
By the end I’ll tell you one of three things. You have a claim, and here’s what it might look like. You may have one, and I need to see a few papers. Or you don’t, and here’s what I’d do in your place. Nobody gets a pitch.
Worked examples
Three claims, counted out loud
Sample matters with made-up numbers, here to show how I think. What anyone is owed depends on their pay, their hours and the facts, and past results don’t predict yours.
- Unpaid overtime
The flat weekly pay
A line cook is paid $700 a week for 56 hours, with no overtime.
How pay claims work$700 for 56 hours is $12.50 an hour
Sixteen hours past forty earn an extra half-rate: $100 a week
Thirty weeks of that is about $3,000, before interest and fees
- Firing after a complaint
Let go two weeks after speaking up
A hotel housekeeper reports a supervisor’s comments to HR, and is let go soon after.
When a firing is unlawfulShe earned $512 a week at the time
Fourteen weeks without work is about $7,200 in lost pay
Whatever she earns next, or collects in benefits, is weighed against that
- A paper to sign
The buyout with a deadline
A warehouse lead is offered four weeks’ pay, $3,600, to sign a release within two weeks.
Before you sign anythingThe release also covers a $1,800 commission nobody mentioned
Four weeks’ pay is a number the company chose, not what a claim is worth
The first useful step is often asking for more time to read
In their words
What clients say after the call
“She told me on the first call what she couldn’t do, which is why I believed what she said she could.”
Renée D.Home health aide
“Nobody had ever explained the papers they handed me when I was let go. She did, in about ten minutes, with a pen.”
Tobias K.Warehouse lead
Each client’s case is different. These are one person’s words about their own experience and don’t predict what will happen in yours.
Write down what happened, then call me
Bring your best guess at the dates and whatever papers you have. If you only have a story, bring that.