ANDERSON — Most full-time employees of new Anderson company Agape Communications walked out on the job Monday alleging that they had not been paid their due hourly wages.
Workers were supposed to get their biweekly paycheck Friday, but were told payroll was running behind, employee Nakia Coleman said. When they arrived to work on Monday, they were told the company’s investor had pulled out and there was no money to pay them, she said.
“That’s not our problem,” Coleman said. “They owe us three weeks of work. We need our money. We’re there every day. We expect a paycheck.”
Agape management said everyone at the company had been paid their due wages, including 27 full-time employees and several temporary employees through Snelling Personnel Services.
“This isn’t a sweat shop or anything,” Agape night shift manager and administrator Marcus Redfield said.
The average wage at the company is $8.50 an hour plus bonuses for large sales numbers, said Ali Vanderbur, executive assistant to the company’s co-owner Jeff Rogers.
The walkout was because some of the employees didn’t agree with Agape’s “regrouping,” a plan to get the company on track to where it could hire 400 people, a goal set when it came to Anderson in March, Redfield said.
Redfield expected many of the employees who walked out on Monday to return to work Tuesday.
But the regrouping Redfield spoke of actually was a new program the company wanted to sell called Score My Bills, a credit building offer from Discover Card, said worker Darlena Shields, who also walked out Monday.
“They said we would start another campaign and if it does good we get paid faster,” Shields said. “If we don’t do this we’re not getting paid. He did have the nerve to ask us all to work for free for him.”
Redfield said those who walked out Monday and didn’t return Tuesday did not share the same values as those who run Agape, a call center that originally sold debt consolidation programs over the phone.
“We had to cut our losses with the people who weren’t dedicated,” Redfield said. “They didn’t have what we wanted as the Agape family. We’ll see who decided to stay loyal.”
Coleman didn’t know of anyone who walked out Monday who plans to go back to work today. Shields said she would try to get employees together to fight for the money they say they are owed, resorting to legal action if necessary.
“Obviously they are definitely trying to jerk us around,” Shields said. “In the meantime I don’t want to be losing my car and my house.”
Employees also claim they were supposed to receive a $40 bonus for every sale made on the debt consolidation program, money they say they never saw.
Redfield said the company still plans on meeting its original goal of hiring 400 people and is renovating a floor in the Union Building, 1106 Meridian St., so it can move out of its current offices in the same building.
Coleman doesn’t see how the expansion could work.
“They have all these insights about how the company is going to be successful,” she said. “They can’t even pay us, let alone pay 400 people.”
Agape was expected to be a boon to Anderson’s downtown economic development when its plans were announced in March. In June, the company had hired fewer employees than expected with 20 workers instead of the 75 it had said it would hire immediately.
Local News
12:24 a.m.: Employees walk out of Agape Communications
Workers claim they have not been paid due wages
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