Yesterday was a national day of action against wage theft. Although almost entirely ignored in the media, wage theft is an enormous problem, dwarfing all other forms of theft in LA, Chicago and NYC, and heavily concentrated among the working poorIn my previous diary, "Minsky & the current crisis", one of the conclusions I reached was "(2) Fraud must be prosecuted. The rule of law must be restored." But financial fraud is not the only form of theft that's become central to our economy over the past few decades. As labor laws have increasingly been undermined and ignored, wage theft has become increasingly widespread, particularly among low-wage workers. I wrote about this twice last year, "The Return of the Dickensian Economy: Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers" and "Robbed On The Job". In fact, a report ("Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers") on wage theft in just three cities--Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City (total population about 15 million)--found that workers had roughly $2.9 billion in wages stolen from them in 2008, a rate more than double that of reported theft in California--population about 38 million--which had total property theft losses of $2.8 billion in 2007 (the most recent figures available at the time.)
From In These Times:
Activists in more than 30 cities, organized by Interfaith Worker Justice and backed by labor groups, are staging a National Day of Action Against Wage Theft on November 18. "As the crisis for working families in the economy has deepened, so too has the crisis of wage theft," says Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) Executive Director Kim Bobo, perhaps the country's leading reformer addressing the ongoing scandal.
As much as $19 billion is stolen from American workers annually in unpaid overtime and minimum wage violations and, in some cases, through the human trafficking of legal immigrant workers. The latest case to come to light involves alleged horrendous conditions for immigrant workers reportedly hoodwinked in Mexico by a food services contractor for the New York State Fair and kept in near-slavery conditions of $2 an hour.
Indeed, the scandal surfaced when some of these legal guest workers showed up several weeks ago at a Syracuse area clinic, severely dehydrated and malnourished after allegedly being kept in virtual imprisonment in a trailer at the fair and at other locations; they were reportedly being denied thousands of dollars in legal wages owed them while working about 100 hours a week at fairs for months, according to legal filings and Danny Postel, communications coordinator for Interfaith Worker Justice.
"It's one of the most shocking cases of wage theft," Postel says.
Here's a short video introducing the problem:
Here in Los Angeles, labor advocates gathered to call for the passage of a local wage theft ordinance as part of the National Day of Action to highlight the issue. They were joined by Councilmember Richard Alarcon, who introduced a motion calling for the crafting of such an ordinance last year. If a wage theft ordinance is passed, Los Angeles would become one of the few cities, along with Denver, Colorado and Austin, Texas, to hold employers criminally responsible for failure to pay workers. I was unable to attend the press conference, but one of the organizers, Chloe Osmer, provided me with the following statement from one of the workers who spoke there:
My name is Raul Coronel and I've worked at Marina Car Wash for 20 years. In the carwash we work hard, sometimes for hours under the sun without proper breaks. At times they've had us work for free - they clock us out when the carwash closes but we still have to keep cleaning the cars that are inside. And worst of all, after working so much the owner has paid us with bouncing checks many times. I personally have received 5 checks with insufficient funds.
I have to support my wife and my 3 children with my wages, so if the owner doesn't pay all of our hours or if we get bouncing checks, it makes it really hard to pay the rent and provide food for my family. Because of the violations in the carwash, the Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against Marina Car Wash and 7 of the owner's other carwashes. This is good but we know it's a long process. We need to prevent this kind of wage theft from happening - that's why we're organizing to form a union and that's why we support the Wage Theft Ordinance. With this Ordinance we're not asking for much - just to be paid fairly for the work we do.
Now, multiply Raul's story by 1.1 million--the number of workers affected just in the three-city aarea covered by "Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers"--and you just begin to understand the extent of the problem.
"As through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
-- Woody Guthrie, "Pretty Boy Floyd, The Outlaw".
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