Stone Canyon Homes employees receive pay

By Luke Brantley
Staff writer
BRILLIANT — Employees at Stone Canyon Homes in Brilliant went nearly three weeks without pay, with little explanation as to why.  
Stone Canyon general manager Johnny Moore told the Journal Record on Friday, Dec. 1, that the situation should have been resolved as of Dec. 4; or Dec. 5, at the latest, but declined further comment before payments were eventually deposited in employees’ accounts.
The missing two weeks’ worth of payments finally began to process into employees’ accounts on Dec. 6, after employees went without pay for about two and a half weeks.
Nathanial “Screech” Atkins, the former exterior department lead at Stone Canyon, said this all began a few months ago when employees began to be laid off, hours began to dwindle and finally, deposits stopped coming in.
“Before this first check that was missed, there were a bunch of us that were only paid for one day the week before that because that’s all we were allowed to work,” he said. “They sent a bunch of us home and kept on about 8-10 people. They brought us back the very next week, and we worked a full 40-hour week. After that week, on Thanksgiving week, we had 26-27 hours counting holiday pay, and we haven’t received either of those payments (as of Friday, Dec. 1).
“So pretty much, a lot of people here are going off of one day’s paycheck for going on three weeks now, almost a month. People are losing water and power or are very close to it.”
Atkins and other employees said they were told very little about what was happening behind the scenes that resulted in the pause in payments.
Moore said that it isn’t the employees’ responsibility to worry about what happens in the corporate realm of the company, which is organized under 413 Cabins LLC and its CEO, Doug Merryman.
“It’s not my responsibility as a manager to tell employees everything that’s going corporately,” Moore said. “I run the company; I don’t put the money in the bank.
“They were working through some corporate deals, and the corporate deals got worked out. Mr. Merryman put the money in the bank for payroll and everybody got caught up.
“It’s not something where everything that goes on inside this company has to be shared with every employee. We did not know that there was going to be payroll problems until the money wasn’t transferred into the account.
“It was just a corporate situation inside the corporate office with the partners, and when their problem got resolved, the money got resolved.”
During the two weeks without pay, Atkins and other employees said they felt the impact it had on their lives.
“That was embarrassing for me to have to go into the water company and the gas company and beg them to give me until the end of the week,” said Rhonda Costa, the inside panel lead at Stone Canyon. “I’ve never had to do that. I’ve never been late on my bills until now.
“We’re in limbo. We can’t get paid, we can’t get unemployment, we can’t get help form any agencies because we’ve all made too much. We’re all screwed. We’re all in limbo.”
Costa said her grandson also picked up on what his family was going through.
“My five-year-old grandson gets off the bus and comes to my house until he gets picked up or I take him home,” she said. “He came in the house, and he unzipped his bookbag and gave me $2. I asked him, ‘What’s that? Is that your snack money?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I didn’t get snack today so you could have it.’ Five-year-old’s shouldn’t feel that.”
Other employees shared similar stories. Moore raised the point that while he has received backlash over the situation, he didn’t get paid either.
“I was in the same situation; I didn’t get a check neither,” Moore said. “We were all in the same boat. My job is to manage this company, and when people walk in this door to treat them the best I possibly can. I don’t think this could have hit at a worse time, but I didn’t have any control over it. I disperse the money when it gets put in there, but it’s not my responsibility to put my personal money into a corporate account.”
Moore also shared his thoughts on the employees who brought this situation to light by speaking to news outlets like the Journal Record.