Photo by Jacques Arsenault

Past and current employees of Capital Bikeshare plan to deliver a petition tomorrow to the District Department of Transportation as part of a campaign to recover what they say are missing wages. Last month, 16 people who have served as mechanics and drivers for the nearly three-year-old bicycle sharing system filed a complaint with the Labor Department saying they are owed more than $100,000 in back wages.

After the complaint was filed, the group launched an online petition addressed to Alta Bicycle Share, the Portland, Ore.-based company that manages Capital Bikeshare and similar systems in several other cities around the United States, including New York City’s recently launched Citi Bike and Chicago’s forthcoming Divvy Bikes.

Alta has said very little about the Labor Department complaint, other than that it is aware of the ensuing inquiry and is “doing everything we can to ensure that we are in compliance.”

DDOT contracts with Alta to run Capital Bikeshare, and the agreement between the two entities stipulates that its employees be paid federal prevailing wages. Samuel Swenson, a former Bikeshare mechanic who filed the Labor Department complaint, said he should have been paid between $14.33 and $15.66 per hour, when he actually earned $13 an hour.

The petition will be delivered tomorrow at 10:15 a.m. to DDOT’s office at 14th and V streets NW, according to a press release from the organizers.