Wage Theft

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">new cat 6/14, generally refers to ripoff of say, migrant workers (esp undoc?) but also quasi legal means, such as fight min wage, eliminate overtime and pay</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">aha 221: amazon and other bigs corps do it, algo? max profit /extract built into corp DNA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">// gig economy? stole tips for wages; bezos steps down/sideways?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/amazon-wage-theft/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/amazon-wage-theft/</a></font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">not violent but hyped</font></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">pop info judd</font></div><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium;">
</div><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">12 22</font></div><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><p style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Walmart CEO Doug McMillon announced during an interview on CNBC last week that the retailer may have to&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/c4300f49-557d-428f-951c-d340c85f79d5?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">raise prices or close stores</a>&nbsp;due to insufficiently aggressive prosecution of retail theft. McMillon claimed that, as a result of lenient sentences, theft at Walmart is “higher than what it has historically been.” During the interview, McMillon does not disclose how much merchandise Walmart is losing to shoplifting or how that compares to previous years.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, racked up $559.2 billion in revenue last year. So far this year, the company has made $15 billion in profits. Last quarter alone, Walmart recorded&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/3e3d2c04-5b66-4703-9ccb-a398e6fbe83f?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">$152.8 billion</a>&nbsp;in sales, nearly a 9% increase from the previous year. The purported spike in shoplifting at Walmart did not stop the company from announcing&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/6804fd67-96af-4393-8b84-96effa602042?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">a new $20 billion share buyback plan</a>&nbsp;last month. And McMillon is being paid as if the company is thriving. In 2021, he took home&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/d1319d2a-5913-45ad-a8b4-53b61b2d5077?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">$22.574 million</a>&nbsp;in total compensation — 1,078 times more than the median Walmart employee.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Publicly available data also contradicts McMillon’s claims. As Popular Information&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/086f4c17-7c2f-428d-8c61-afd37ad52199?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">previously reported</a>, the number of shoplifting offenses dropped 46 percent between 2019 and 2021, according to the FBI’s&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/9accc5be-0b15-4c6a-ac74-125cfc1f56e6?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">crime data explorer</a>.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, not all shoplifting incidents result in charges. But the&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/15718693-9443-4188-95a0-6edd6fde03d4?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">National Retail Federation</a>, a trade association that represents Walmart and other major retailers, found that "shrink" — an industry term for inventory losses from theft, damage, or administrative errors — declined between 2019 and 2021. In 2021, the average shrink rate was&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/15718693-9443-4188-95a0-6edd6fde03d4?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">1.4% of total retail sales.</a>&nbsp;That means for every $100 in sales, an average of $1.40 in inventory was lost. Retail theft alone amounted to&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/15718693-9443-4188-95a0-6edd6fde03d4?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">0.5% of total retail sales</a>, or $0.52 for every $100.</font></p><div class="yiv0725435484captioned-image-container-static" style="color: rgb(29, 34, 40); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 26px; margin: 32px auto;"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="yiv0725435484image-wrapper"><tbody><tr><td style="word-break: normal; text-align: center;" /><td align="left" width="1456" class="yiv0725435484content" style="word-break: normal; text-align: center;"><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/ad1353f4-e28a-40e4-8327-69bb9c2206d2?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" class="yiv0725435484image-link" style="color: rgb(25, 106, 212); text-decoration-line: none; border: none; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: auto;"><img alt="" width="550" height="258.0013736263736" src="https://ecp.yusercontent.com/mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstackcdn.com%2Fimage%2Ffetch%2Fw_2912%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Agood%2Cfl_progressive%3Asteep%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%252Fpublic%252Fimages%252Fb3e3c4cd-5e85-4a65-9dcb-0be1e1b73355_1472x690.png&t=1670962655&ymreqid=5b97f7b6-4cda-3c8f-1c3e-a303a5013100&sig=nggZqZlBjT1dwZaR2TT5qg--_D" class="yiv0725435484wide-image" style="text-indent: -9999px; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px auto; vertical-align: middle; max-width: 100%; border: none !important; width: auto !important;" /></a></td><td style="word-break: normal; text-align: center;" /></tr></tbody></table></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The average retail shrink in 2021 is the same as it was in&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/a891a240-0810-40ed-812d-0c4bb3948b12?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">2015</a>. The only difference is that shoplifting and external theft made up a slightly&nbsp;<em>larger</em>&nbsp;portion of the "shrink" in 2015 than it did in 2021.&nbsp;</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Walmart isn’t the only company stoking fears of a shoplifting surge. Last year, Walgreens&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/92ee22b1-8851-481b-b6c5-9e5bb8dfc5b0?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">announced</a>&nbsp;that it was closing five stores in the Bay Area due to the “scale of thefts.” Popular Information found that this claim, however, was not reflected in citywide crime data, which showed that in 2020 shoplifting had reached its lowest level since they began collecting data 45 years ago. Walgreens also said in 2019 that it planned to shutter 200 stores as a “cost-saving measure,” reported the&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/430a4e0a-123b-4ddb-a564-fc370f647a34?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">San Francisco Chronicle</a>. “[T]he timing of Walgreens’ decision led observers to wonder whether a $140 billion company was using an unsubstantiated narrative of unchecked shoplifting to obscure other possible factors in its decision,” wrote the&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/430a4e0a-123b-4ddb-a564-fc370f647a34?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">San Francisco Chronicle</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Target CFO Michael Fiddelke&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/d740abfc-86c6-4d3f-a35a-43ce84b2550e?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">told CNBC</a>&nbsp;last month that theft rose “about 50% year over year.” The company told&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/2c8f293b-d976-42dc-8a44-a7aed2a700a2?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">Winsight Grocery Business</a>&nbsp;that it is working with legislators and law enforcement to address the “growing national problem” of retail theft. Similarly, last week, the former CEO of Home Depot, Bob Nardelli, described retail theft as an “epidemic” and said that shoplifting was “<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/855e80ea-d214-4bcd-9ddf-273dea33ad5d?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">spreading faster than COVID</a>.”</font></p><p style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Despite the apocalyptic rhetoric, losses from shoplifting pale in comparison to the wages employers steal from employees each year. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that employers<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/b69dd8aa-c90c-409f-8084-1964930095b1?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">&nbsp;steal roughly $15 billion annually</a>&nbsp;from their employees from minimum wage violations alone. This figure, which excludes other common forms of wage theft like overtime violations, “exceeds the value of property crimes committed in the United States each year.”&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Since 2000, Walmart has had to pay $1.5 billion in penalties for wage and hour violations</b>, according to the&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/1caecc13-aac5-46cc-8595-f407e7b1bd81?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">Good Jobs First Violation Tracker</a>.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Will more aggressive prosecution deter theft?</font></strong></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CNBC's Rebecca Quick, one of the hosts of Squawk Box, asked McMillon about "laws that have been changed." Specifically, Quick claims that there are new laws that provide "criminals won't be prosecuted below a certain level." McMillon accepted the premise of Quick's question, arguing the laws need to be "corrected."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Quick's description of the law is inaccurate. States have not passed statutes legalizing theft. Rather, all states have a felony threshold for shoplifting. In Connecticut, shoplifting more than $200 in goods is a felony. In Texas, the threshold is $2,500. Misdemeanor theft, below the felony threshold, generally results in little to no jail time. Felony theft can result in years in prison.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since 2000,&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/0b1f71e2-323f-4542-a148-c8e6c26a863b?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">at least 40 states have raised their felony theft thresholds</a>. Walmart and other retailers have spent millions opposing these changes, arguing that raising the felony threshold will increase shoplifting. The data, however, does not support this claim.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A 2017&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/de0ff800-fc69-4c87-b922-4c2ced6918c4?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">study</a>&nbsp;by Pew Trusts found that "in the 30 states that raised their thresholds between 2000 and 2012, downward trends in property crime or larceny rates, which began in the early 1990s, continued without interruption</b>." Further, the study found that "states that increased their thresholds reported roughly the same average decrease in crime as the 20 states that did not change their theft laws." Notably, the "amount of a state’s felony theft threshold—whether it is $500, $1,000, $2,000, or more—is not correlated with its property crime and larceny rates."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2010, South Carolina raised the threshold for felony theft from $1,000 to $2,000. Pew Trusts&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/ef98e41f-729e-4bca-98fe-f786ceb6a038?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">found</a>&nbsp;that "since the law was implemented, the state’s property crime rate …continued to fall, dropping 15 percent in the three years after reform." Despite the higher threshold, "the value of goods reported stolen in the state…did not change, remaining about $200 on average."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px 0px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Retailers were able to push through a harsh anti-shoplifting law, with no felony threshold, in Arizona. It&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/f45062ea-6b38-4468-b467-5282d791ae9a?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">resulted</a>&nbsp;in a "man who robbed [a] Walmart of goods worth less than $10… facing two felony charges."</font></p><p style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64); line-height: 26px; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Why doesn't increasing the felony threshold increase shoplifting? Most shoplifters are not making a calculation about the potential legal consequences. Many are&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/740cdbde-d067-4a3d-b769-59cf5f1988d8?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">addicted to drugs</a>&nbsp;and are willing to do anything to feed their addiction. Last month, Walmart proposed paying&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="blank" href="https://substack.com/redirect/047191b9-a889-49ac-b73d-5b284abda895?j=eyJ1IjoiN3ltancifQ.i0HJl3aVWG8sHp566T-pebMssFGKcgvxVOFLuZyEDpw" style="color: rgb(64, 64, 64);">$3.1 billion to settle lawsuits</a>&nbsp;alleging it "improperly filled prescriptions" for opioids, fueling an addiction epidemic.&nbsp;</font></p></div><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 919</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'</font><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/literally-taking-money-from-the-pockets-of-workers-trump-labor-department-slammed-for-wholly-inadequate-overtime-pay-rule/" style="font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" color="color" transition="transition" all="all" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" font-size="font-size" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" line-height="line-height" display="display" inline="inline" important="important">Literally taking money from the pockets of workers’: Trump Labor Department slammed for ‘wholly inadequate’ overtime pay rule</a></p><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 12px;"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); font-size: inherit;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/jessica-corbett/" title="Posts by Jessica Corbett" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit;">Jessica Corbett</a>&nbsp;/&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/common-dreams/" title="Posts by Common Dreams" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit;">Common Dreams</a></span></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5;">Labor rights advocates and progressive economists slammed the Trump administration after the Department of Labor&nbsp;announced&nbsp;Tuesday a final rule on overtime pay to replace a bolder Obama-era proposal blocked by a…</p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/waging-war-on-wage-theft/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/waging-war-on-wage-theft/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As state after state raises the minimum wage, companies continue to find ways to cheat hourly workers out of pay they’re entitled to — by holding unpaid mandatory off-the-clock meetings, and even requiring employees to continue working after clocking out.</b></font></p><div class="p1_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“They’re asked to work off the clock before or after their shift. They don’t get a meal break for each eight-hour shift, companies fail to pay time and a half” </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">when it’s due, Peter Ruark, senior policy analyst for the Michigan League for Public Policy, told&nbsp;</span><i style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">WhoWhatWhy</i><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span></font></p><div class="p2_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Sometimes their tips are even confiscated.</b></font></p><div class="p3_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wage theft steals from society as well as from individual workers, according to Ruark. When people do not receive wages or benefits that were rightly earned, “they have less to spend in their communities. It adds to family stress. They may have to receive food assistance.”</font></p><div class="p4_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Employees are supposedly protected against such practices by the Fair Labor Standards Act, so why don’t they speak up? Because, Ruark said, by definition minimum wage violations affect the lowest-wage workers — the workers who can least afford to bear the cost of fighting back.</font></p><div class="p5_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“These are people who don’t feel they have a lot of clout to be whistleblowers. They feel their employment is vulnerable,” he said. These employees may feel especially vulnerable in what labor experts are labeling the Trump administration’s employer-friendly environment.</font></p><div class="p6_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Anthony Paris, lead attorney at the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sugarlaw.org/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice</a>&nbsp;in Detroit, agreed that low-wage workers, especially immigrants, are reluctant to rock the boat. “They think it just goes with the territory.”</font></p><div class="p7_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Lauren Rosen, one of Paris’s clients, did decide to rock the boat. She said in an interview with&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">WhoWhatWhy</i>&nbsp;that she volunteered to complain to management about stolen tips on behalf of herself and co-workers because “I’ve got no kids, no mortgage.”</font></p><div class="p8_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In late 2014, Rosen began working at a Michigan restaurant where she helped serve at private parties. The three or four servers who worked each private party would split the tips, she said in an interview, but they didn’t have access to the bill to see how much was paid and how much was actually tipped.</font></p><div class="p9_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I’d go out with co-workers after a long party shift. People started talking, asking each other how much they made,” she said. Eventually “one of us got a glance at what they tipped — the total didn’t equal the tip we received.”</font></p><div class="p10_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Further discussions led Rosen to the conclusion that management paid white workers more than workers of color. “Time after time when I compared with black co-workers, all of us were being stolen from, but it was more so for black workers.”</font></p><div class="p11_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eventually Rosen said she was able to sit down with a manager to discuss the situation. “The manager said, ‘okay, I’ll be right back.’ Another manager was brought in and I was fired. They called security. They said I was a threat to others.”</font></p><div class="p12_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Rosen and others filed a class action suit. </b>Eventually, she said, “There was a deal. They cut everyone a check. My check was $500 for November to April. A hundred bucks a month.”</font></p><div class="p13_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Numbers, the Law</font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rosen is just one of millions. An&nbsp;<a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year-survey-data-show-millions-of-workers-are-paid-less-than-the-minimum-wage-at-significant-cost-to-taxpayers-and-state-economies/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Economic Policy Institute report</a>&nbsp;found that, in the 10 most populous states, 2.4 million workers lose $8 billion annually (an average of $3,300 per year for year-round workers) to minimum wage violations. That’s nearly a quarter of their earned wages, according to the 2017 report.</font></p><div class="p14_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The law that most commonly covers wage theft is the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/hrg.htm" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)</a>, dating back to 1938. The FLSA establishes the federal minimum wage, overtime pay, record-keeping, and child labor standards affecting employees in the private sector and governments.</font></p><div class="p15_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the owner of private businesses, Donald Trump has been accused of underpaying or refusing to pay hundreds of workers and contractors. (Last year, Trump’s longtime personal driver, Noel Cintron, filed a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-driver/longtime-trump-drivers-overtime-lawsuit-moved-to-private-arbitration-idUSKCN1LF2CO" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">lawsuit</a>&nbsp;against Trump Organization for allegedly failing to pay him overtime. The two sides later agreed to arbitration.)</font></p><div class="p16_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As president, he has been accused of rolling back labor policies, including those that protect worker pay.</font></p><div class="p17_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Damages on minimum wage violations are small and difficult to recover, Haeyoung Yoon told&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">WhoWhatWhy</i>. She was with the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nelp.org/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">National Employment Law Project</a>&nbsp;and is now Distinguished Taconic Fellow with the&nbsp;<a href="https://communitychange.org/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Center for Community Change</a>&nbsp;in Washington, DC.</font></p><div class="p18_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We don’t have enough resources to address and turn the tide against rampant wage thefts. It takes a long time to come forward and file a claim,” and to make sure agencies respond in a timely manner, according to Yoon.</font></p><div class="p19_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It takes a lot for workers to come forward. They often have to take time off. There are hard choices every step of the way,” she said. Workers fear retaliation — losing their jobs or having the number of hours they work cut — and immigrants may fear deportation.</font></p><div class="p20_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Tipping System</font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Workers who rely on tips to supplement their hourly pay fall into a special, precarious category. In some cases, the FLSA allows employers to pay employees who receive tips less than the standard minimum wage.</font></p><div class="p21_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“For so long tipped workers have been at lowest rungs of the economic ladder,” according to Jonathan Roberts, of&nbsp;<a href="https://rocunited.org/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC)</a>&nbsp;in Michigan, told&nbsp;<i style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">WhoWhatWhy</i>.</font></p><div class="p22_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Tipped wages are the legacy of slavery and forced labor … After almost a century it’s legal in many states to be paid less than $3 an hour. In Michigan it’s $3.38. If your tips don’t make up the difference, the employer is supposed to pay you the difference,” he said.</font></p><div class="p23_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Restaurant jobs are disproportionately held by the most vulnerable in the workforce, Roberts said. “This is not just where high school or college students go to make extra money. The majority are working women, women of color, immigrants who are supporting their families, trying to make ends meet off of poverty wages.”</font></p><div class="p24_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The tipping system also can make employees more vulnerable to sexual harassment, he added.</font></p><div class="p25_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s putting working women in a situation where they have to choose between being insulted or risk not receiving tips. This is a system where working women are constantly taken advantage of.”</font></p><div class="p26_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.3em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">States, Cities Step Up</font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Some states and municipalities are stepping up the war against wage theft.</font></p><div class="p27_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As part of its ongoing initiative to combat wage theft in the construction industry,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mass.gov/news/ag-healey-assesses-more-than-27-million-in-penalties-and-restitution-against-construction" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office issued 165 civil citations against 66 construction companies last year</a>. Restitution exceeded $1.47 million for more than 1,030 employees of the various employers, and the companies were fined a total of more than $1.23 million.</font></p><div class="p28_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Five years ago, the California Labor Commissioner’s Office under then-commissioner Julie A. Su (now California labor secretary), launched the&nbsp;<a href="https://wagetheftisacrime.com/What-We-Do.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Wage Theft is a Crime</a>multilingual public awareness campaign and cracked down on violators.</font></p><div class="p29_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The result has been a series of victories in cases involving restaurants in the San Francisco area</b>. In mid-January&nbsp;<a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/popular-calif-burmese-restaurant-pays-4m-in-back-wages" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Rangoon Ruby agreed to pay&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;about 300 workers $4 million in wages and penalties. In February, as the result of a class action lawsuit, Gordo Taqueria agreed to pay employees $690,000. Also in February, the office&nbsp;<a href="https://cslea.com/2019/02/rdv-construction-cited-for-12-million-for-wage-theft-affecting-more-than-1000-workers/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">cited</a>Southern California subcontractor RDV Construction, Inc., for nearly $12 million in wage theft violations.</font></p><div class="p30_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The California Labor Commissioner’s Office has partnered with a number of nonprofits in the state, including the Asian Law Caucus, Chinese Progressive Association, and Young Workers United. The nonprofits are able to reach out to the workers, often immigrants who need help with English, and guide them through the complaint process.</font></p><div class="p31_32" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These community groups play a vital role in spreading the word about wage theft and in connecting local enforcement agencies with aggrieved employees, according to Haeyoung Yoon. “The community groups help identify cases. The workers are our eyes and ears.”</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Meet&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">U.S. Representative</a>&nbsp;<span class="print-footnote" style="">[10]</span>&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Roby" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Martha Roby</a>&nbsp;<span class="print-footnote" style="">[11]</span>, a.k.a. Cruella DeVille. While the Tea Partying 37-year-old is not fighting tooth and nail against people getting affordable healthcare, she’s coming up with ways to deprive employees and workers of their hard-won rights and protections.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This week she introduced a resolution euphemistically called “Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013,″ which would&nbsp;<strong style=""><em>end&nbsp;</em></strong>the requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act for employers to pay&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-and-a-half" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Time-and-a-Half</a>&nbsp;<span class="print-footnote" style="">[12]</span>&nbsp;to employees for every hour worked over 40 in one week</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. It’s called H.R. 1406, and here’s what the Congressional Budget Office has to say about it:</span></font></p><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;“H.R. 1406 would amend the&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938</a>&nbsp;<span class="print-footnote" style="">[13]</span>&nbsp;to provide&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtime" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">compensatory time</a>&nbsp;<span class="print-footnote" style="">[14]</span>&nbsp;for employees in the private sector. In lieu of overtime pay, employees could receive compensatory time off at a rate not less than one and one-half hours for each hour of employment for which overtime pay would otherwise have been required. Such compensatory time could be provided only in accordance with a&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_bargaining" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">collective bargaining</a>&nbsp;<span class="print-footnote" style="">[15]</span>&nbsp;agreement or with the consent of affected employees. The changes would be effective for five years after enactment of the bill.”</font></p></blockquote><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Long story short: It’s another way for employers to exploit workers with long hours and less pay. Note the use of the word, “flexibility,” which, when used by conservatives always affords more “flexibility” to employers, not workers, flexibility to work people round the clock, say, without paying overtime. Kind of like “right to work,” which is, of course, code for “right to be exploited, worked to death and fired for no particular reason.”</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/06/05/wage-theft-pervasive-corporate-america-banks-insurers-most-penalized-firms">https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/06/05/wage-theft-pervasive-corporate-america-banks-insurers-most-penalized-firms</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">: June 5, 2018</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Contacts:</span>&nbsp;Philip Mattera, Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First, pmattera@goodjobsfirst.org,<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />Joel Mendelson, Jobs With Justice Education Fund, joel@jwj.org</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WASHINGTON, DC — <b>A new report finds that many large corporations operating in the United States have boosted their profits by forcing employees to work off the clock, cheating them out of required overtime pay and engaging in similar practices that together are known as wage theft.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The detailed analysis of federal and state court records shows that these corporations have paid out billions of dollars to resolve wage theft lawsuits brought by workers. Walmart, which has long been associated with such practices, has paid the most, but the list of the most-penalized employers also includes Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other large banks and insurance companies as well as major technology and healthcare corporations. Many of the large corporations are repeat offenders, and 450 firms have each paid out $1 million or more in settlements and/or judgments.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These are among the findings in&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Grand Theft Paycheck: The Large Corporations Shortchanging Their Workers’ Wages</em>&nbsp;published today by the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First and Jobs With Justice Education Fund. It is available at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/wagetheft" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">www.goodjobsfirst.org/wagetheft</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Our findings make it clear that wage theft goes far beyond sweatshops, fast-food outlets and retailers. It is built into the business model of a substantial portion of Corporate America,” said Good Jobs First Research Director Philip Mattera, the lead author of the report.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The report summarizes a year-long compilation and analysis of 1,200 successful wage theft litigation cases brought against large companies that have been resolved since the beginning of 2000. These cases, in which employers have paid out a total of $8.8 billion, involve occupations ranging from cashiers and security guards to financial advisors and pharmaceutical sales representatives. The same group of companies paid another $400 million in penalties to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division during that period. Three-quarters of the $9.2 billion in overall penalties came from the giant companies included in the Fortune 500, the Fortune Global 500 and the Forbes list of the largest privately held firms.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Among the dozen most-penalized corporations, <b>Walmart, with $1.4 billion in total wage theft settlements and fines, is the only retailer. Second is FedEx with $502 million. Half of the top dozen are banks and insurance companies, including Bank of America ($381 million); Wells Fargo ($205 million); JPMorgan Chase ($160 million); and State Farm Insurance ($140 million).</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“At Wells Fargo, aggressive sales quotas based on exploiting vulnerable customers forced me into 12-hour shifts with no breaks and no food allowed — and threats to withhold my paycheck if I didn’t sign off on working extra hours for free,” says Kilian Colin, who worked for the bank between 2013 and 2016 in southern California.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Retailing is the industry with the highest aggregate penalties ($2.7 billion) imposed on large companies, followed by financial services ($1.4 billion); freight and logistics ($828 million); business services ($611 million); and insurance ($557 million).</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More than 100 companies have paid penalties in three or more collective action lawsuits. Bank of America and its subsidiaries did so more than two dozen times.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The totals and rankings are based on penalties that were publicly disclosed, though the report documents 127 additional cases involving 89 large companies that petitioned courts to keep the details of their wage theft settlements confidential. AT&T, Home Depot, Verizon Communications, Comcast, Lowe’s and Best Buy each had multiple sealed settlements.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Half of the private lawsuits documented in the report came from a single state: California, which has a rigorous labor code that can be enforced either in state court or in combination with federal rules in U.S. courts.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“While wage theft is pervasive, it is also preventable,” said Jobs With Justice Education Fund Senior Policy Analyst Adam Shah, who contributed a chapter on policy recommendations for the report. “We see increased urgency for policymakers to step up with solutions because the U.S. Supreme Court recently made it harder to bring collective action lawsuits to stop wage theft and the Trump Administration may weaken federal enforcement. California provides a model for other states to emulate to ensure that working people have access to courts to hold cheating bosses accountable and that agencies have resources they need to enforce the laws.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Many companies accused of wage theft are highly profitable. Among the dozen most- penalized corporations, all but two had an annual net income of more than $2 billion in their most recent fiscal year. AT&T, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo each had more than $20 billion in profits. These companies pay their chief executives generous salaries, bonuses and perks. CEOs at AT&T, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Walmart each receive annual compensation of more than $20 million.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Along with more than 300,000 other regulatory penalties, the data used in the report can be viewed and downloaded from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/violation-tracker" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">ViolationTracker.org</a>, the nation’s first comprehensive database on corporate misconduct.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Good Jobs First</span>, based in Washington, DC, is a non-profit, non-partisan resource center promoting accountability in economic development. Its Corporate Research Project provides research resources for organizations and individuals concerned about all forms of corporate accountability.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Jobs With Justice Education Fund</span>&nbsp;is a national network expanding people’s ability to come together to improve their workplaces, their communities, and their lives. We create solutions to the problems working people face by leading campaigns, changing the conversation and moving labor, community, student and faith voices to action.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision will make it harder for workers to sue their employers for wage theft. Please see Mary Bottari’s article on this case,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/05/22/epic-fail-supreme-court-strips-non-union-workers-power/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background: 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out; text-decoration-line: none;">EPIC Fail: Supreme Court Turns Back the Clock to Strip Workers of Power.</a></font></em></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">kos</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21204/walmart-corporations-wage-theft-labor-settlements-firms">http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21204/walmart-corporations-wage-theft-labor-settlements-firms</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; letter-spacing: 0.125px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">&nbsp;Kramer</strong>&nbsp;at&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">In These Times&nbsp;</em>writes—<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21204/walmart-corporations-wage-theft-labor-settlements-firms" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">For Big Corporations Like Walmart, Wage Theft Penalties Are Just the Price of Doing Business</a></strong>:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 30px 60px; margin: 20px 0px; border: none; width: 810px; line-height: 24px; z-index: -1; letter-spacing: 0.125px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">A scathing&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/news/releases/report-wage-theft-pervasive-corporate-america?utm_source=wage+theft+press+release+5jun18&utm_campaign=wage+theft+press+release+5jun18&utm_medium=email" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">new report</a><span style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">&nbsp;finds that hundreds of major corporations in the United States are repeat wage-theft offenders—committing the violations and then paying the subsequent fines as part of the cost of doing business. Jointly published on June 5 by&nbsp;</span><em style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247); box-sizing: border-box;">Good Jobs First&nbsp;</em><span style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">and</span><em style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247); box-sizing: border-box;">&nbsp;Jobs with Justice Education Fund</em><span style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">, the report finds that, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">since 2000, 450 firms have each paid at least $1 million each in settlements or judgments related to wage theft. And 600 companies paid a penalty in multiple cases of wage theft, indicating that punitive measures are not deterring these companies’ violations. In some cases, the number of settlements and fines was stunning, with <b>Hertz seeing 167 cases since 2000 and Walmart</b> seeing 98 cases and shelling out $1.4 billion.</span></font></p><figure class="image-captioned width-md align-left" style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247); box-sizing: border-box; display: table; margin: 7px 20px 26px 0px; float: left; max-width: 50%; clear: both;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><figcaption data-image-attribution="attribution: Neeta Lind" title="attribution: Neeta Lind" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: table-caption; caption-side: bottom; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: none; padding-bottom: 10px; line-height: 20px; position: relative; padding-top: 13px;" /></figure><p style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report is authored by Philip Mattera and includes a chapter on policy recommendations, written by Adam Shah. Through a compilation of available lawsuits, ranging from January 2000 to the present, Mattera finds 4,220 cases filed against large companies where employers were penalized for wage theft to the tune of $9.2 billion total.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mattera tells<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">&nbsp;</span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">In These Times<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">&nbsp;</span></em>he was shocked by the number of large companies that were involved in wage theft. “I had thought that wage theft would turn out to be mainly an issue for a limited number of large corporations,” he said. “The fact that it is so pervasive in big business highlights the power imbalance between capital and labor.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wage theft is a practice in which companies withhold their employees’ overtime pay, force off-the-clock work, violate minimum wage laws or steal tips. Victims of wage theft range from low-wage workers like cashiers, cooks and security guards to higher-paid positions such as nurses, pharmaceutical sales reps and financial advisors. In the 10 most populous states in the country, 2.4 million workers lose $8 billion annually (an average of $3,300 per year for year-round workers) to minimum wage violations, according to a 2017<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year-survey-data-show-millions-of-workers-are-paid-less-than-the-minimum-wage-at-significant-cost-to-taxpayers-and-state-economies/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">report</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">&nbsp;</span>by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). In 2015 and 2016, a total of $2 billion in stolen wages were recovered for workers by the U.S. Department of Labor, that EPI study found.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The biggest players in wage theft are Fortune 500 companies, like Walmart, FedEx and AT&T, according to the Mattera and Shah report. Five of the top dozen companies heavily penalized were banks and insurance firms, including <b>Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and State Farm Insurance</b>. Mega-corporations account for half of the total cases.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);"> [...]</span></font></p></blockquote></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://desmogblog.com/2016/06/19/oil-companies-facing-spurt-lawsuits-after-robbing-oilfield-workers-millions-wages</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="caps">U.S.</span>&nbsp;oilfield workers are facing a big problem, and it’s not just the depressed prices in the worldwide oil&nbsp;markets.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Those who have jobs, especially the lowest level and dangerous jobs in the oilfields, are at high risk of being stiffed in a variety of ways. And they’ve started to fight&nbsp;back.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Five years ago, when the price of oil was high and fracking operations were ramping up throughout Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Colorado and other states, there were plentiful stories about oilfield workers, many with minimal experience, pulling down&nbsp;<a href="money.cnn.com:2011:10:28:pf:America_boomtown_jobs" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">six figure incomes</a>. But even though the industry is known for paying high wages, the big paydays are more often due to the total number of hours worked, sometimes with workweeks exceeding 100&nbsp;hours.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>And these workers are very likely to be victims of “wage theft,” a denial of wages by employers wrongly classifying them as exempt from overtime, or paying them flat salaries regardless of the number of hours worked, or reneging on production&nbsp;bonuses.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Still, the money was rolling in, and industry watchers say that workers, if they even knew they were being cheated, were likely to turn a blind eye to the&nbsp;practices.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;" /><div id="block-block-110" class="block block-block first odd" style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; line-height: 18.59px;"><div class="inline-newsletter-form" style="padding: 12.375px 24.7656px; margin: 1.5em 0px;"><span style="line-height: 18.59px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now that many of those workers are idle, they’re speaking up and demanding the pay that they should have&nbsp;received.</font></span></div></div><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The&nbsp;<span class="caps">U.S.</span>&nbsp;Department of Labor is on the case. Since 2012, more than 1,100 investigations of industry employers have recovered more than $40 million for more than 29,000 workers nationally according to the&nbsp;<span class="caps">DOL</span>.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2015,&nbsp;<a href="http://insideenergy.org/2015/09/26/halliburton-violates-overtime-laws-owes-18-million/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">the&nbsp;<span class="caps">DOL</span>&nbsp;settled a case against oilfield services giant Halliburton</a>&nbsp;for $18 million dollars</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. The Department found that the company cheated more than 1,000 workers –field service representatives, pipe recovery specialists, drilling tech advisors, perforating specialists and reliability tech specialists – by not paying them the required&nbsp;overtime.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In March the&nbsp;<span class="caps">DOL</span>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20160314-1" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">announced&nbsp;</a>that it found violations of the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dol.gov/WHD/flsa/index.htm" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Fair Labor Standards Act’s</a>&nbsp;overtime provisions affecting more than 2,500 employees at four companies: Jet Specialties, Frank's International, Viking Onshore Drilling and Stream-Flo&nbsp;<span class="caps">USA</span>. The Department said employees at these companies were owed $1.6 million in back&nbsp;wages.</font></p><h3 style="line-height: 1.28205em; margin-top: 1.28205em; margin-bottom: 1.28205em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Way It’s Always Been&nbsp;Done?</font></h3><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Department of Labor began investigating claims of wage theft in the northeast region in 2012, at the height of the Marcellus Shale boom. Within a year, investigations spread west when it became clearer that wage violations were widespread throughout the industry, says Robin Mallett, a&nbsp;<span class="caps">DOL</span>&nbsp;Wage and Hour Division district director in&nbsp;Houston.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mallett tells DeSmog she’s seen wage violations in the oil and gas industry across all companies —large and small. She stopped short of saying that workers in oil and gas are stiffed more than other industries, but she did say that oil and gas has a very large number of vulnerable&nbsp;workers.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="dquo" style="margin-left: 0px;">“</span>What we see in oil and gas is a lot of contingent workers, moving from job site to job site. We look at the industry and pay practices and how industry may be set up. The pay structure in oil and gas is fissured, and there’s a lot of subcontracting, with one big company paying another who pays another who pays another until you get to the oilfield workers. The lower you go, the more likely there will be violations, because the money flows through a&nbsp;chain.”</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mallet said the investigations show a pattern of industry violations. These include &nbsp;classifying employees exempt overtime requirements and then failing to pay an overtime premium regardless of how many hours they work, and failing to include bonus payments workers have received as part of their regular rates of pay when calculating how much overtime is&nbsp;due.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mallet tells DeSmog she saw deliberate and inadvertent misclassification of oilfield laborers as managers, even though&nbsp;<span class="caps">DOL</span>regulations say job titles do not indicate exempt status in order to deny workers overtime pay.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="dquo" style="margin-left: 0px;">“</span>We see a lot of explanations from employers we’ve investigated saying ‘this is just how things have always been done in the industry.’” Mallet said. “But it’s not clear when the practices started, or&nbsp;why.”</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 18.59px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mallet admitted that&nbsp;with a small number of&nbsp;<span class="caps">DOL</span>&nbsp;investigators, “we’re just making a ripple in changing industry&nbsp;practice</font></p></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/25/nyregion/new-york-attorney-general-accuses-dominos-of-wage-theft-in-lawsuit.html</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="114" data-total-count="114" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The system, as outlined in a lawsuit filed by the New York State attorney general, was as simple as it was flawed.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="74" data-total-count="188" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A pizza is ordered from Domino’s. A pizza is made. A pizza is delivered.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="120" data-total-count="308" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The workers who assembled and delivered the pie clock their hours on a computer system, and those workers are then paid.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="264" data-total-count="572" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But for years, according to the lawsuit against the corporate franchiser that owns Domino’s Pizza, the computer system used by franchises across the state systematically undercounted hours worked by employees, shortchanging them hundreds of thousands of dollars.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="198" data-total-count="770" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The lawsuit, announced on Tuesday, was the latest salvo in a campaign by the attorney general,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/eric-schneiderman?version=meter+at+null&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fduckduckgo.com%2F&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Eric T. Schneiderman</a>, against what he says is a pattern of corporations shortchanging low-wage workers.</font></p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="114" data-total-count="884" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em 75px; line-height: 1.625rem; max-width: none; width: 570px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Since 2011, Mr. Schneiderman has secured more than $26 million for almost 20,000 workers who were bilked of wages.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">sil valley colludes 2014</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/opinion/wage-theft-across-the-board.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</font></div><div><h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 19.2px; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="mw-headline" id="New_Report_Documents_How_Privatization_Steals_Wages.2C_Harms_Communities" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.prwatch.org/node/12503" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Report Documents How Privatization Steals Wages, Harms Communities</font></a></span></h3><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">by&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mary_Bottari" title="Mary Bottari" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Mary Bottari</a></font></p><span style="line-height: 19.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
All across the country, public services are increasingly outsourced to private contractors in the name of efficiency and cost savings. But a new report from the non-profit research group In the Public Interest (ITPI) shows that outsourcing public services hurts middle and working class communities as well as workers.</font></span><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The report, "<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/RaceToTheBottom" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">Race to the Bottom: How Outsourcing Public Services Rewards Corporations and Punishes the Middle Class</a>," makes the case that when private contractors make huge profits from taxpayer dollars, money is often sucked out of local communities. Dollars that used to go to employees are sent to shareholders instead, harming communities as local workers have less to spend. Taxpayers take another hit when employees, who used to have access to health care and good wages, now have to rely on food stamps and Medicaid to survive.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.4em 0px 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Read the rest of this item&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.prwatch.org/node/12503" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">here</a>.</font></p><hr style="height: 1px; border: 0px; margin: 0.2em 0px; line-height: 19.2px;" /><h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 19.2px; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><span class="mw-headline" id="The_National_Restaurant_Association_Spends_Big_to_Keep_Wages_Low" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.prwatch.org/node/12444" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaaveleqvr42n3pgqkaiaheuxdqj3dqj3e6iotpusqcgj4eq5iluile0jil3pecxhchgbhz8kg4hwxau3mzecgeyfnaxp4hqnqpnt7ql0nadpd6whcclvnakksq8iiaaaaaaelftksuqmcc="AAAAVElEQVR42n3PgQkAIAhEUXdqJ3dqJ3e6IoTPUSQcgj4EQ5IlUiLE0Jil3PECXhcHGBhZ8kg4hwxAu3MZeCGeyFnAXp4hqNQPnt7QL0nADpD6wHccLvnAKksq8iiaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The National Restaurant Association Spends Big to Keep Wages Low</font></a></span></h3></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">......</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>