Mario Cedeno showed up for work. Eleven hours a day. Six days a week. Sixty hours on the clock.
His pay: $20 an hour. In cash. No pay stubs. No records of the hours. No overtime.
When he asked about the missing money, his boss at Ultrack Construction in Hillsborough County, Florida, allegedly told him the quiet part out loud:
“No one pays overtime in construction work,”
Cedeno asked again.
He was fired.
That is the core of the class-action lawsuit Cedeno filed this month under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The complaint says Ultrack failed to pay overtime, failed to keep required records, and retaliated when a worker dared to bring it up.
The law is not ambiguous. Non-exempt construction workers—roofers, carpenters, laborers—are entitled to time-and-a-half after 40 hours. The Department of Labor has said so for decades. Cash pay and “industry practice” do not create an exemption.
Cedeno’s attorneys calculate he is owed roughly $6,800 in unpaid overtime plus liquidated damages. The suit seeks the same for every other Ultrack worker denied overtime during the company’s three-year run.
Ultrack itself is already gone. It filed for voluntary dissolution in February 2025, citing a “lack of customers” and “no revenue to continue functioning.” The former owner is named as a defendant.
This is not a one-off story about a single Florida roofing crew. It is a window into how wage theft actually works on job sites: long hours, cash under the table, zero documentation, and the threat of termination if anyone speaks up. The workers who keep roofs over other people’s heads often have the least protection when the paychecks come short.
Cedeno’s case is still in its early stages. But the pattern is familiar. Ask for what the law already requires. Get told the industry doesn’t work that way. Get shown the door.
If this is how the system treats the people who climb on roofs in the Florida heat, the question isn’t whether the lawsuit has merit.
The question is how many more crews are still working under the same rules—and how long they will stay silent.