Since President Obama's election, the Department of Labor has been strengthening efforts to protect workers' rights and enforce labor laws after eight years of neglect by the previous administration.
As part of this renewed commitment, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis has introduced a new campaign entitled "We Can Help" to fight wage theft-- a shameful but not uncommon practice in which employers pay workers less then they're owed, force them to work overtime without appropriate compensation, or falsely classify them as independent contractors to avoid payroll taxes.
Along with the injustice faced by individual workers, wage theft creates systemic problems in the labor market that hurt all workers. This fosters a "race to the bottom" that punishes employers who follow the law.
In addition to the DOL's outreach program to help workers prevent and report wage theft, our friends at Interfaith Worker Justice have launched an online resource center at www.wagetheft.org.
IWJ president Kim Bobo was on The Ed Show this week and did a great job explaining the problem and what workers can do:
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