Wage Theft

17 Of The Worst Corporate Crimes In 2015

December 27, 2015 Phil Mattera, www.DirtDiggersDigest.org Educate! Big Banks, Big Pharma, Bribery, Climate Change, Corporate crime, Finance, Food and Agriculture, Oceans, Oil and Gas, pollution, Wage Theft, Workplace hazards

By Phil Mattera for Dirt Diggers Digest. The ongoing corporate crime wave showed no signs of abating in 2015. BP paid a record $20 billion to settle the remaining civil charges relating to the Deepwater Horizon disaster (on top of the $4 billion in previous criminal penalties), and Volkswagen is facing perhaps even greater liability in connection with its scheme to evade emission standards. Other automakers and suppliers were hit with large penalties for safety violations, including a $900 million fine (and deferred criminal prosecution) for General Motors, a record civil penalty of $200 million for Japanese airbag maker Takata, penalties of $105 million and $70 million for Fiat Chrysler, and $70 million for Honda. Major banks continued to pay large penalties to resolve a variety of legal entanglements. Five banks (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS) had to pay a total of $2.5 billion to the Justice Department and $1.8 billion to the Federal Reserve in connection with charges that they conspired to manipulate foreign exchange markets.

Tomorrow, Thousands Of Workers Fight Wage Theft

September 3, 2014 Carl Gibson, www.readersupportednews.org Resist! Minimum Wage, Wage Theft, Worker Rights and Jobs

But my experience is just one example of the situation for millions of restaurant workers in America today. All of America’s burglars, convenience store robbers, carjackers, muggers, and bank robbers combined don’t steal even half as much money as America’s top restaurant chains steal from their workers in a given year. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. Department of Labor had to recover $280 million in wages held by employers in 2012. That same year, the Department of Justice said the total amount of money stolen in robberies was $139 million. But since criminal restaurant chain executives aren’t being carted off to jail for their acts of robbery, restaurant workers will shut down their businesses by any means necessary this Thursday – including committing acts of civil disobedience.

How Corporations Get Away With Rampant Wage Theft

June 10, 2014 Myron Levin, Stuart Silverstein and Lilly Fowler, www.salon.com Educate! Law, Minimum Wage, Wage Theft

For workers stuck on the bottom rung, living on poverty wages is hard enough. But many also are victims of wage theft, a catch-all term for payroll abuses that cheat workers of income they are supposedly guaranteed by law. Over the last few years employers ranging from baseball’s San Francisco Giants to Subway franchises to Farmers Insurance have been cited for wage violations. More often, though, wage abuses are not reported by victims or punished by authorities despite being routine in some low-wage industries. “If you steal from your employer, you’re going to be hauled out of the workplace in handcuffs,” said Kim Bobo, a Chicago workers rights advocate and author. “But if your employer steals from you, you’ll be lucky to get your money back. Victims typically are low wage, low-skilled workers desperate to hang on to their jobs. Frequently, they are immigrants—the most vulnerable and least apt to speak up. “They know that if they complain, there’s always someone else out there who is willing to take their job,” said Maria Echaveste, a former labor official during the Clinton administration who is now at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. While heart-breaking for employees, wage theft also robs federal and state treasuries of many billions of dollars in taxes, and puts employers who play by the rules at a serious competitive disadvantage.

Wage Theft Is A Bigger Problem Than Other Theft

April 3, 2014 Ross Eisenbrey, www.epi.org Educate! Wage Theft, Worker Rights and Jobs

Wage theft is a far bigger problem than bank robberies, convenience store robberies, street and highway robberies, and gas station robberies combined. Employers steal billions of dollars from their employees each year by working them off the clock, by failing to pay the minimum wage, or by cheating them of overtime pay they have a right to receive. Survey research shows that well over two-thirds of low-wage workers have been the victims of wage theft, but the governmental resources to help them recover their lost wages are scant and largely ineffective. Few local governments have any resources or staff to combat wage theft, and several states have closed down or so severely cut back their labor departments that workers are left mostly unprotected and vulnerable to exploitation. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is the one agency that brings substantial resources to the effort to prevent and remedy wage theft, but its total staff of wage and hour investigators, about 1100 in all, is responsible for securing compliance from more than seven million employers.

PHOTOS: Nationwide Protests Against McDonald’s Wage Theft

March 19, 2014 Staff, TheRealNews.com Resist! Corporatism, Poverty, Wage Theft, Worker Rights and Jobs

Fast food strikers in Detroit rally on Tuesday in support of a Michigan-based class action suit filed this week alleging systematic wage theft by McDonalds. The protest is part of a nationwide day of action raising awareness about the problem of wage theft. Community supporter at St. Louis rally. "I was living in my car in a McDonalds parking lot - the McDonalds where I work", said a disabled worker. "My two children were staying with my parents, but I could barely afford to keep them fed. And the whole time, I believe my boss was robbing me." Workers from NYC-based Fast Food Forward make a citizen's arrest of Ronald McDonald for alleged wage theft. In a 2013 poll, over 80 percent of New York City fast food workers reported being victims of wage theft.

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