Is there exploitation in your dinner?
It's hard to image a more fundamental right than the right to get paid for your work, but wage theft — the unlawful under-payment or non-payment of wages — is all around us.
Ask the gardeners, janitors, servers, dishwashers, nannies, and construction workers in your town or university. Studies show that a fifth of workers in low-wage industries are paid less than the minimum wage in a given week. Ask people,
Have you ever been paid less than minimum wage?
Had your tips stolen?
Not gotten your final paycheck?
Worked off the clock?
Not received time and a half pay for overtime hours?
Wage theft not only treats workers unjustly, but also it drives down wages for all of us, because honest employers are forced to compete with low road employers who pay sub-standard wages. Wage theft also robs from the government’s tax reserves, resulting in cutbacks of vital services and programs, such as Pell grants that help students attend college.
When you stand up against wage theft, you are standing up for yourselves and for all workers.
What can we do about wage theft?
Take direct action to recover stolen wages for workers. We go directly to employers and demand stolen wages. When they don't comply, we file complaints to the Department of Labor, hold press conferences and boycott businesses. We also take action to shame businesses that tolerate sexual harassment, discrimination and other violations.
Educate workers about their rights. Only when workers know their rights and have a strong organization to exercise their rights can we make a change.
Identify "Fair Restaurants." To change New Haven's restaurant industry, we can identify and support those businesses that respect worker's rights. We can encourage consumers to patronize those businesses that are certified by workers as "Fair Restaurants."
Make legislative changes. Around the country, workers are creating laws to strengthen wage & hour enforcement and impose harsher penalties on employers who steal wages.
Myths & Truths about Wage Theft
from Interfaith Worker Justice www.IWJ.org
Doesn’t the Department of Labor enforce wage and hour laws? Why do we need to take direct action and boycott businesses?
In 1941, the US Department of Labor had 1,700 investigators — one investigator for every 9,000 workers. They inspected 1 in 10 businesses, by entering the workplace, talking with workers, and examining payroll records.
In 2010, the DOL had only 1000 investigators — one investigator for every 130,000 workers.
We have learned that employers in New Haven have no fear of the DOL. Goodfellas Cafe, an expensive restaurant on State Street, is just one example. The DOL has forced Goodfellas to pay stolen wages on multiple occasions, but when we sat down with the Goodfellas owner to demand $23,000 that he owed four workers, he told us openly that he had no fear of continuing to violate wage and hour laws. He said that he would never pay minimum wage and overtime to his dishwashers, because "that's the way business works in America," and because "everyone gets away with it."
These are tough times for workers and small businesses. If we force businesses to pay minimum wage, won't they have to lay off workers or close down altogether?
There are small businesses and locally owned "mom and pop" shops that pay fair wages and survive. We need to rally around and support small businesses that are doing the right thing.
Preventing wage theft is good for businesses that want to do the right thing. Stopping wage theft would level the playing field, so that ethical businesses won’t be forced to compete with unfair employers.
We do not need to support businesses that steal wages. Poverty jobs will not get us out of this economic crisis. Only creating decent jobs with good pay will do that. When working class families receive all of their hard earned wages, they have more money to buy goods, which is necessary for a good economy.
Most of the basic labor protections we have today were passed during the Great Depression of the 1930s: minimum wage, overtime pay, the right to form a union and engage in collective bargaining, and social security. These laws helped pull the country out of the Depression and provided a basis for creating the middle class in America.
Does wage theft legislation help undocumented immigrants who are not authorized to work?
Allowing employers to steal wages from undocumented workers encourages low road businesses to hire unauthorized workers and underpay workers.
That is why every worker – citizen and immigrant alike – is protected by all of the nation’s labor laws. The DOL and ICE have a Memorandum of Understanding that creates a firewall between them, so that all workers regardless of immigration status will know that they can report wage theft and health and safety violations without fear of being turned over to ICE.
A recent survey of 4,400 workers in three major American cities found that:
- 26 percent had not been paid the minimum wage in the most recent workweek;
- 76 percent had not been paid overtime for the extra hours they worked;
- In these three cities alone, workers lost $56.4 million per week as a result of labor law violation
