In early summer 2022, Riley DeHority got a part-time job at Bookholders, a textbook reseller with a storefront on the edge of Virginia Tech’s campus in Blacksburg.
DeHority was working on their doctorate in biosystems engineering and had a summer job in a lab but wanted to earn extra money to pay for some car repairs.
Soon after accepting the job offer there, DeHority discovered that the pay was below Virginia’s minimum wage. Their hourly rate would be $9 an hour and increase to $9.75 after a two-week training period.
Virginia’s minimum had increased that January from $9.50 an hour to $11.
DeHority, who uses they/them pronouns, started asking questions. Then they started talking to coworkers. “Many people who had accepted these jobs didn’t realize that they had accepted a sub-minimum wage job,” DeHority said. “They didn’t even know that the minimum wage was higher than what they were getting paid.”
DeHority was fired shortly after making a wage complaint to the state. In the three years that followed, DeHority pursued that wage claim, ended up in court for a related lawsuit, and opened a case with the National Labor Relations Board. That case was only decided in late March.
Now, DeHority wants other student workers to know their rights.
Bookstore workers paid subminimum wage
DeHority found out about Virginia’s recent minimum wage increase after they took the job at Bookholders but before they started working there in May 2022.
When DeHority began work and asked their boss, Bookholders owner John Verde, about the pay rate, they said Verde claimed he had a federal certificate that allowed him to pay students below minimum wage. Verde did not respond to an interview request for this story.
Bookholders has locations near college campuses in Blacksburg and Richmond, as well as in Towson, Maryland.
“I didn’t want to push it, because I kind of needed a job,” DeHority said.
DeHority was suspicious, but stayed at the job. They liked the work: Spending about eight hours a week packing boxes at Bookholders was a nice change of pace from working in the lab on campus, they said. Every employee who worked there that summer was a college student, they said, with the exception of one high schooler.
DeHority researched the federal certificate Verde said he had that allowed him to pay student workers below minimum wage. DeHority found out that the program exists, but under Virginia law, it’s only applicable for students under 18. Once they turn 18, student workers must be paid the minimum wage.
(Virginia has since announced it will sunset that federal subminimum wage program.)
DeHority started talking to coworkers about filing a wage theft claim with the state’s Department of Labor and Industry. DeHority hoped that they and others working at Bookholders would get any additional money they should have received.
“A lot of them were not interested,” DeHority said. But some were, especially once they figured out they should be getting paid up to $2 more per hour than they were getting. Some workers, they said, had been hired at $9 and never been promoted out of that lower-wage “training period.”
DeHority had only been at the bookstore for a few weeks at that point, but “some of my coworkers had been there for months, working a lot of hours. I felt like they were owed a lot of money.”
DeHority and two other workers submitted wage claims to the state. Soon after, DeHority was fired for talking at work, they said. Then Verde sued all three workers in Maryland state court for breach of contract, claiming the workers had signed arbitration agreements when they accepted their jobs that meant they couldn’t file wage claims.
DeHority’s state wage and hour claim was resolved pretty quickly, they said. DeHority and the two other workers who filed claims received their final paychecks that Verde had tried to withhold. The court dismissed the Maryland lawsuit in January 2023.
But DeHority’s fight wasn’t over. In fall 2022, they and the other two students filed wrongful termination complaints with the National Labor Relations Board.
Their NLRB case was only decided by a judge this spring. Most cases don’t make it that far — the vast majority of unfair labor practice complaints, known as charges, are withdrawn, dismissed or settled before being reviewed by a judge.
The board judge found that Bookholders violated federal law by firing DeHority after they filed a wage complaint, by trying to curb worker discussion in social media groups, and by making employees sign an arbitration agreement when they were hired.
The judge ordered Bookholders to remove or revise its arbitration agreement, to stop terminating employees who participate in protected activity such as social media groups, and to provide back pay and compensation to DeHority.
Bookholders appealed the decision, citing contradictions between testimony in the case and the judge’s writeup of the decision. The case now moves on to a review by a panel of three NLRB board members. However, the board only has two members right now. President Donald Trump fired one of the members in February, and it’s unclear when the NLRB will have a quorum again.
Blaine Taylor, an attorney for Bookholders with law firm Jackson Lewis in Baltimore, declined to comment on the case.
An online job advertisement for Bookholders in Blacksburg doesn’t advertise the current starting pay for clerks.
Sarah Bessell, an attorney with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs who represents DeHority, said that if a worker thinks they’re a victim of wage theft — if their employer isn’t paying the correct wage, isn’t paying overtime, or is doing something else to prevent the worker from getting paid the expected rate — the worker can file a complaint with the state labor department. Virginia labor law prohibits employers from retaliating against workers who submit a complaint.
If multiple workers advocating for their wage and hour rights face employer retaliation — such as being fired or having pay withheld — they can bring a charge before the NLRB, Bessell said. Workers can do so regardless of whether they are unionized.
The WLC and D.C.-based law firm Murphy Anderson PLLC collaborated pro bono to represent DeHority and their coworkers in the Maryland lawsuit and the NLRB case.
‘You definitely deserve the minimum wage’
DeHority only got about $83 from their Virginia wage claim, most of it from a missing paycheck they were still owed. It’s unclear whether they’ll get any money from the NLRB case, once the appeal is reviewed. But DeHority said it was important to stand up to their former employer regardless of the money.
“I don’t want people to get taken advantage of,” DeHority said. They added, “I want people to explore their legal options. I want people to look into if they are owed money by any previous employer, not just Bookholders.”
The WLC provides free legal services to workers in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., who think they may be a victim of wage theft. Any worker can visit the WLC’s website to set up an intake appointment to have their situation reviewed by phone.
Students who worked at Bookholders in Blacksburg in the past three years and were paid below minimum wage can contact Murphy Anderson law firm to learn if they may be eligible to make a claim against the bookstore.
She advises workers to look closely at their pay stubs and pay rates to see if anything is incorrect. If you feel safe, talk to your colleagues and compare notes about concerns with your pay. “You can trust your gut,” Bessell said. “I’d rather you reach out early and not have a case than to reach out later” when the statute of limitations may have already expired.
“I want people to know that it does take some courage and it does take some effort and research” to fight an unscrupulous employer, DeHority said. “But you definitely shouldn’t be taken advantage of. You definitely deserve the minimum wage.”
Since the WLC represented the Virginia Tech students pro bono, DeHority hosted a fundraiser night in late April to raise money for the organization. DeHority has since graduated from Virginia Tech and moved away from the area, but was excited to celebrate the NLRB victory, which hadn’t yet been appealed. They held it at 540 Social, a downtown Blacksburg restaurant and bar that offers axe throwing and arcade games.
The eatery is next door to Bookholders.