Co-authored with Cristina Francisco-McGuire
This week, we authored a report grading states on how well they protect a fundamental workplace right: getting paid what you are legally owed. This right is so basic and common-sense that most people are still unaware of how commonly it is violated.
Wage theft, or the illegal underpayment of workers, has become so widespread, it affects millions of workers across the country and is nearly ubiquitous in certain industries: retail, restaurants, hospitality, day-labor, warehousing, child care, and construction. That's a lot of people -- already not getting paid enough -- whose bosses illegally make their paychecks even lighter.
The last time a detailed, multi-state survey was done, the findings were shocking. Researchers in three of our nation's largest cities interviewed thousands of workers who earned at or near the minimum wage, and found a wide array of workplace violations. Here are just the basic facts:
Added up across the nation, this amounts to billions of dollars in earnings stolen from people who can least afford to lose it. In New York State alone, workers' losses are estimated at $3 billion per year, and wage theft costs the state $427 million per year in uncollected revenues. By depressing the consumer spending needed to fuel economic growth and by defrauding states and taxpayers to the tune of millions of dollars, this is a problem that affects all of us.
State laws and labor departments play a crucial role in prosecuting wage theft, filling in where enforcement of the federal minimum wage law is either lacking or not applicable. Even after the U.S. Department of Labor hired 250 more investigators in 2009, there is still only one investigator for every 141,000 workers -- nearly ten times fewer than there were seventy years ago, after the federal minimum wage was first enacted.
Our new report, Where Theft is Legal, shows that, if "cracking down on wage theft" were a class, 44 out of 50 states would fail one of the major tests: enacting strong laws against the crime. At the same time, several states have begun to move in the right direction. As we highlighted in another recent report, New York passed a law in 2010 that is now the strongest in the country. Illinois, California, and Massachusetts have also developed strong and innovative policies to help workers reclaim their wages and convince employers to abandon wage theft. But far too many states have done little to nothing at all.
So what would strong wage theft laws look like? The state laws and policies being advanced by worker advocates and forward-thinking policymakers are setting the new standard for cracking down on wage theft. In Where Theft is Legal, we pulled together the best of these policies into a comprehensive standard, and measured states' existing laws against it. These policies fall into three major categories that, together, comprise a strong wage theft policy:
Accessing Justice: The most basic provisions of wage theft laws are among the most important: which workers are protected, and whether the law gives them the tools to recover stolen wages. An often overlooked issue is the problem of employer retaliation against workers challenging wage theft. Unless employees have strong legal protections, the risk and impact of losing a job can be greater than the possible benefit of taking on one's employer.
Transparency & Accountability: Good recordkeeping laws help workers and their employers stay on the same page regarding wage rates, paydays, work hours, and payroll deductions. Not only do laws like payday notification and paystubs create a paper trail that makes it easier to process wage claims, they ensure that employers who play by the rules have nothing to fear.
Securing Justice: In order to clamp down on wage theft effectively, the law must incentivize workers to pursue claims, as well as deter employers from violating the law. This third major component of strong wage theft laws policies addressing those two imperatives: the amount in damages workers are able to recover through filing a wage claim, and the civil and/or criminal penalties for employers for violations.
Without any one of these policies, we lack the essential protections and tools to change the way unethical employers do business. Yet, our report shows that New York is the only state that receives a passing grade in all of these categories -- and even it only earns a C+ overall.
This week, we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the first state minimum wage law - a landmark achieved more than a quarter century before the federal government set a national standard. Today, forty-five states have their own minimum wage laws, and eighteen have set them higher than the national $7.25. It is up to states to lead the way on wage theft, just as they did in establishing the minimum wage.
The consequences of inaction are dire. Not just last week's alarming unemployment report, but the whole economic landscape shows signs of a tectonic shift away from our nation's vision of itself as a land of opportunity. Most of the jobs being created since the end of the Great Recession are in lower-wage industries where wage theft is rampant. As a result, millions of the people considered "lucky" enough to find work these days are not only landing in jobs earning less than a livable wage, but in workplaces where their pay is eroded even further by illegal deductions and underpayments.
If we do not crack the wage theft problem, the very notion of economic security will be a relic of our past. The already-weakened economy could weaken even further, meaning that even those of us fortunate enough to have jobs where we don't suffer wage theft could end up having to take one where we do, as millions already have.
Tim Judson is the Workers' Rights Policy Specialist at Progressive States Network, a national non-profit that works with state legislators and advocates to develop and advance progressive legislation in the states. Cristina Francisco-McGuire is Senior Policy and Program Specialist at Progressive States Network.
Follow Tim Judson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TimPSN
Eric T. Schneiderman: Honoring Labor Day By Rooting Out Wage Theft
Over time, as the people who suffered through the Great depression aged and died, the conservatives, beaten back, but not dead, waited until Americans were comfortable and unsuspecting before the started to creep back into positions of influence. For thirty years, bit by bit they disassembled all the safeguards our forebears set in place in the wake of the Great Depression, and within a few years, oopsie! Another economic meltdown! Surprise!
As a nation, we lived through this once before. We already know what to do. The only thing that's stopping us from doing it are the Republicans and the conservatives who control their thinking.
The problem is, not only has union representation sunk to near non-existence in the private sector, if you think it's hard to challenge wage theft - try organizing a union! The law protecting workers' right to organize is far weaker than federal wage laws, and states are constitutionally prohibited from doing much to address that. Until we vastly strengthen the right to unionize, collective bargaining won't be a viable means of addressing exploitation and workplace abuses. That's not to say we need to make a false choice (unions versus labor standards). The labor movement didn't grow by picking one path over the other. Minimum wage, child labor, and occupational safety laws were all advanced along with unionization -- and we are in the same situation now.
IMPO..........A great many of America's woes can be traced back to this simple source....... corruption.
Our elected "representatives" no longer represent the PEOPLE of the United States, they represent the interests of corporations and the wealthy individuals who run them, those who fund their campaigns.
Until that changes, I doubt things will improve much for MOST Americans.
Publicly funded elections, and the elimination of ALL outside influence, is the answer to so many of America's problems.
If Congress WEREN'T corrupt to the core..............we would see it being offered.
Continue living your life as normal, but just put that 1% away... you will barely notice it's gone. but in a year you'll notice you've saved up 1% of a whole year's income... and that living on 99% percent started feeling like 100%... and that you know you could live on 98% after that, or even 95% and that maybe after six-months you feel like you could live on 90%.
Maybe in a couple years you'll have 6-months living expenses saved up, and you'll start thinking about what you REALLY want to be doing with your time on this planet, and what percent your going to have to put away to take your next step of getting there.
It may not seem easy, but it IS simple.
As for anyone that can afford a cup of coffee, or rent a movie, or hit a bar now and then... like me... i feel it is our responsibility to grab a hold of our paychecks and pull just as strong as the people stealing from us.
It sure works. Just not for the employees.
i've been tricking myself to get by on less and less over the last two years, and I believe the last thing greed wants is slaves with savings accounts.
if you think you can survive on 99% of your income, and just let 1% ride, I implore you to try it, jack.
http://www.iwj.org/blog/psn-wag-theft-report