So what you do is you have a system where employees can claim unpaid wages from a government agency who pays them and then goes after the company that didn’t pay to recover the money.
Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers
181–190 of 457 posts
Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers
#182One of the clearest illustrations of the deeply injust structural power imbalance at the heart of our economic system is wage theft. If your employer withholds $20 from your paycheck it's a civil violation of contract law. You have to go through an extremely onerous and convoluted process that very likely won't go anywhere. If, in response, you decide to pay yourself by taking $20 from the till, that's criminal theft…
To be fair, it also works the other way --
If you withhold $20 from a bill payment, the worst that happens is collections. The company has to go through an extremely onerous and convoluted process that very likely won't go anywhere.
If, in response, a company employee decides to settle the bill themselves by visiting your home and stealing $20 from your wallet, that's criminal theft. They will be arrested by the police, sent to jail, and charged in the criminal justice system.
In the end, the imbalance isn't fundamentally one between employers and employees -- it's the fact that stealing is a very different situation than not paying money owed.
Of course it does benefit employers in the end, since they get to receive work now and pay later. Which makes you wonder why it's never become a thing for workers to receive their daily/weekly/biweekly wages or salary at the start of the period? In which case any wage theft would come from quitting the job before the end of the period.
Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "industry buddies" but seems like a Boogeyman meant to scare people.
That's exactly what it is, but the kids they employ don't know better. The idea that there's a cabal of restaurant owners who get together to discuss in detail how they're breaking the law and maintain a blacklist is absurd when you stop to think about it. But they're more than happy to let those kind of rumours keep doing the rounds to scare the naive young people into not sticking up for themselves.
It might be funny, but in Mexico it's done differently.
There are Whatsapp groups of HRs working in a particular group (tech, construction, etc.) where they communicate. Obviously they don't discuss the names openly but they do ask if someone is willing to give feedback on a candidate that worked at XY.
Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers
#184So, you're telling me yet another intervention, this time minimum wage fiat, doesn't work? Who could have thought?
I don't know how you make the jump from human exploitation to "there's too much interventions".
Libertarians and ultra capitalists see the building on fire and complain that we have too many firefighters. Let this building auto-regulate! To some degree it's probably the same mechanisms of self-deception that conspiracy theorists use to make themselves feel good and superior for having seen the light.
There is no magic effect of the capitalism system. It eats workers and shits billionaires. It won't self correct. And arguably yes, all the regulations are just patches to the system, but short of a revolution and changing the system itself, that's the best there is for now.
Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers
#185This phenomena is pretty widespread in the service industry and I would venture to say that a significant minority of businesses participate in some version of wage theft. For example, one of my jobs right out of high school was waiting tables at a local restaurant. If you were opening, the expectation from owners and management was you'd get in early to help open but would wait 15 minutes before service started befo…
A danish labor union is currently suing for this. They have already settles on ~25.000 USD being paid out to one worker who was paid for 37 hours a week but according to his clocking in and out of the building area had worked up to 60 hours per week.
This is exactly one of the key responsibilities for labour unions to manage this interest on behalf of their members.
Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
> not only would they fire you but they'd call up all their industry buddies and you'd basically be on every other restaurants no-hire list. So like a much-dreaded union for employers except it’s underhanded and illegal.
Yes, exactly. And it’s underhanded and illegal when employers do it, because there’s an imbalance of power between employee and employee. Unions exist to even out that balance of power. When employers engage in that kind of activity it further increases the imbalance of power. For example, in this case, they were using that tactic to support their ability to steal from employees.
To clarify this further:
The employer is already a collective, "A business", and the hiring manager is operating with the full power of that collective in hiring/firing negotations.
A union is a collective to balance power against the business (collective).
A cartel is a collective of collectives (ie., a group of businesses) operating to defeat free market competition regulation, in this sense the cartel is balancing power against the state -- which is the only permitted "collective of collectives".
Cartels challenge states (power to create free markets), whereas unions challenge businesses (power to hire/fire).
This is why unions are permissible and cartels are not.
Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers
#187One of the clearest illustrations of the deeply injust structural power imbalance at the heart of our economic system is wage theft. If your employer withholds $20 from your paycheck it's a civil violation of contract law. You have to go through an extremely onerous and convoluted process that very likely won't go anywhere. If, in response, you decide to pay yourself by taking $20 from the till, that's criminal theft…
I wonder if there has ever been a case (I'm sure there has) where someone stole say a $20 from the register, because the manager owed them $20. And whether the fact they could prove the manager owed them money made any difference in the theft case.
No, that's not how it works.
And thank goodness. In the same way, if you go to a restaurant and walk out without paying, but you've been there before and paid with a credit card, they're not allowed to go back and charge that credit card by the amount you stiffed them.
If you want your money, you need to go through the courts. You can't just take money you're owed, no matter if there's a debt or not. Not until a court says you can.
Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers
#188This phenomena is pretty widespread in the service industry and I would venture to say that a significant minority of businesses participate in some version of wage theft. For example, one of my jobs right out of high school was waiting tables at a local restaurant. If you were opening, the expectation from owners and management was you'd get in early to help open but would wait 15 minutes before service started befo…
> not only would they fire you but they'd call up all their industry buddies and you'd basically be on every other restaurants no-hire list. So like a much-dreaded union for employers except it’s underhanded and illegal.
> > not only would they fire you but they'd call up all their industry buddies and you'd basically be on every other restaurants no-hire list.
An interjection: Under GDPR this is illegal. (Just a reminder that "tech" legislation sometimes also improve on broader levels)
Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers
#189I know this is not the same thing but there is another form of what I consider wage theft that is totally legal in my state. That is the ability of an employer to pay almost half of minimum wage based on the fact that the employee gets tips. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped
In my state...Idaho...employees can be paid as low as $3.35 (if I am reading that correctly). I know many people local who worked under this law for many years. The town I am in it costs approx 2x the average "renters salary" to afford to live. We currently have constant "now hiring" signs on almost every building. One of the largest employers in the area uses this law to pay their people peanuts. The only ones who can afford to stay in this town are the ones who already had houses before the "doubling" that happened over the last 5 years...and often they are on edge too.
But you know..."Go ruthless capitalism".
Re: Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers
#190> Eventually Martinez and several of his co-workers left after not getting paid for four weeks of work. If my employer fails to make even a single paycheck I would immediately be looking for another job because the chances are that it isn't that they're looking for free labor, but rather that they have cashflow problems. I am not interested to depend on a sinking ship for my income.
When the cash flow of an income-generating investment changes, a disciplined investor will rebalance to reduce the risk to their portfolio to the desired level. For many people their job is their major investment.