West Ridge Daycare Workers Say Little Angels Owes Them $24,000 in Back Pay

Seven people who used to work at Little Angels Day Care Center in West Ridge say their former boss owes them a combined total of more than $24,000 in wages that were never paid.

The workers gathered outside the daycare at 6407 N. Maplewood Ave. on Thursday with organizers from Arise Chicago and Communities United to deliver a letter demanding back pay. It was the second such letter the group has sent. The first, mailed in June, got no response, according to Arise Chicago.

Arise Chicago said it has also filed six formal complaints with government agencies on the workers' behalf: two with the Illinois Department of Labor and four with the Chicago Office of Labor Standards, part of the city's Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection.

When the group showed up at the daycare Thursday, no one answered the door. Reporters and workers were not let inside, so the group left a copy of the letter on the floor of the center's lobby. Phone calls to the daycare were not returned.

Ale Moreno worked at Little Angels for about 10 months while on a break from college. She was studying to become a social worker and took the job partly for experience and partly to help support her family, she said. Early on, she noticed some coworkers occasionally got their checks late but didn't think much of it. Then two of her own paychecks never arrived, and she said she couldn't get a straight answer from her boss about when she'd be paid. She quit soon after.

Moreno said she's owed roughly $1,000.

"I loved my job, but I didn't love not getting paid," Moreno said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. "Not getting paid had a major income and emotional impact on me and my family. We still had important expenses."

Jasmin Ramboyong said her unpaid wages add up to more than $7,000, the largest amount among the group. Ramboyong worked at Little Angels for about five years before leaving in 2023 to care for her child, who developed a medical condition requiring extra attention.

In October 2024, Ramboyong said her former boss asked her to come back and offered her a raise. She missed teaching and agreed to return, but said she never received the higher rate she was promised. She also says she was never paid for roughly 180 hours of work during that second stretch at the daycare.

"For a while I turned a blind eye," Ramboyong said, adding that she was grateful just to have the chance to return to a job she loved. "But gratitude should never mean accepting exploitation. I felt betrayed."

Ramboyong said the missing pay caused her to miss a car payment for the first time in years and pushed her further into credit card debt just to cover everyday costs.

"The emotional and financial stress was overwhelming," she said.

A spokesperson for the city's Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection said the agency does not comment on active investigations handled by its Office of Labor Standards. A spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Labor could not be reached to confirm whether the state complaints are under review.

The seven workers are asking for full payment of the wages they say they're owed, along with any penalties available under state and city wage laws. Arise Chicago said it plans to keep pressing the case through the pending agency complaints while continuing to seek a direct response from the daycare's owner. The workers are now waiting to hear back from the two agencies that received their complaints. No timeline has been set for either investigation to conclude.