Tough times (2): wage theft and other crimes

I first learned the term “time theft” when I read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, a first-hand account of low-wage work.  Her last job was working for Wal-Mart, and she was told that any time she spent speaking to a co-worker, or going to the bathroom, or just caching her breath was “time theft” from her employer.

Reading  Steven Greenhouse’s 2008 book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, I learned another term – “wage theft” -  which is about how employers coerce employees into working unpaid overtime or falsify their records so as not to pay for all hours worked.

I knew that undocumented workers – illegal immigrants – constituted an underclass outside the protection of U.S. law that could be exploited at will.  I knew that salaried “professionals” – programmers, college instructors, journalists, lawyers – often worked 60 hours or more a week, sometimes voluntarily but often not.  And I knew that companies found ways to redefine employees as managers or independent contractors to avoid having to obey labor laws.

http://philebersole.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/tough-times-2-wage-theft-and-other-crimes/

 

DMI Blog: The Economics of Labor Exploitation

This striking quote from an anonymous Manhattan restaurant owner illustrates the vulnerable position undocumented immigrants occupy in our labor market. The restaurateur admits to paying undocumented workers less than their due—though he insisted, of course, that this was at least minimum wage. But because these workers are easily threatened with deportation, they are demonstrably less likely to speak out if they are denied minimum wages, meal breaks or safety equipment. And New York City’s restaurant industry is only one breeding ground for such violations. A groundbreaking multi-city report revealed just how these practices pervade occupations and industries throughout the low-wage labor market.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is one of the agencies tasked to punish employers who break the law in hiring and abusing undocumented workers. And since last year, ICE has publicly shifted its focus from high-profile raids and mass arrests of these workers to behind-the-scenes criminal investigations of employers that rely on and exploit their labor. According to statistics from the agency, it has investigated over 2,070 businesses as of July 31, far more than the 1,500 conducted in 2009.

One such investigation culminated in charges against a Miami ….

http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2010/09/post_86.html

 

 

 

In These Times: Immigrants Drive Campaign to Unionize L.A. Car Washes

The car wash is the quintessential symbol of American exuberance. Nothing speaks to our freewheeling consumer culture like our obsession with shampooing, waxing and pimping our rides for the world to see. But in the gleaming car capital of the world, Los Angeles, carwash workers are driving a movement to expose rampant abuses in one of the city's dirtiest jobs.

As the New York Times' Steven Greenhouse pointed out, L.A.'s car washes seem "an unlikely target for a unionization drive," since the sector is dominated by relatively small enterprises and runs on the cheap sweat of immigrants, many of them undocumented.

http://inthesetimes.org/working/entry/6423/immigrants_drive_campaign_to_unionize_l.a._car_washes/

 

Miami Herald: Protecting the poorest

The Miami-Dade County Commission will vote Friday to officially implement its Wage Theft Program, which helps low-paid workers recover earnings when they've been stiffed by unscrupulous employers.

The first of its kind in the state, the innovative program is being watched all over the country. Too bad today's action is a hollow exercise: No funds have been designated to keep it going.

Wage theft is a critical problem for low-income workers. Day laborers, hospitality, restaurant and retail workers recount horror stories of working weeks -- or even months -- without pay. With the economy in such bad shape, they fear quitting.

Until this year, they have had nowhere to turn. The County Commission made wage theft illegal, and in February passed an ordinance that gave exploited workers an advocate to negotiate on their behalf: the county's Small…

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/10/1816927/protecting-the-poorest.html#ixzz0z8XgCnU2

 

IthacaJournal: Former Collegetown cafe owner fined

The owner of the short-lived Green Cafe in Collegetown has been fined almost $1 million by the New York State Department of Labor for unpaid back wages at the Ithaca location and at a still-open deli in New York City.

The state DOL began investigating restaurant owner Charles B. Park last fall after the Tompkins County Workers' Center filed a complaint on behalf of workers.

Anna Ottoson worked as a cashier at the Green Cafe at 330 College Ave. where she became friends with some of the Latino back-of-the-house workers. Though Ottoson and other front-of-the-house workers were always paid on time and in full and received normal time off, she soon learned that the Latino workers were not being paid in full and never given a day of rest, she said.

Ottoson said she encouraged the Latino workers to talk to Park and insist on having at least one day of rest per week. Park repeatedly told the workers he'd let…

http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20100903/NEWS01/9030379/Former-Collegetown-cafe-owner-fined-1-million-for-unpaid-wages

 

OregonCenterforPP: Wage Theft Robs Workers and the Economy

Payday arrived, but the paychecks did not.

The news broke last month of a dozen workers scrubbing floors at a Safeway warehouse in Clackamas who claim that the temp agency that hired them repeatedly failed to pay. Fortunately for them, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries negotiated with Safeway payment of the wages owed, while the bureau considers going after the temp agency.

Unfortunately, though it rarely makes news, wage theft is all too common these days. And it is making life more difficult for many workers who already earn too little.

Wage theft affects a significant share of the lowest-paid workers. In a landmark study published earlier this year, researchers from the National Employment Law Project surveyed workers in low-wage industries in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City. They found that a quarter of these workers — one out of four — were paid less than minimum wage in the previous work week.

The fleecing of workers did not end there. Of the workers who reported putting in more than 40 hours a week, three-quarters of them said they did not receive overtime pay to which they would be entitled. And 70 percent of those who worked beyond their regular shift, either coming in early or staying late, reported not getting paid for their…

http://www.ocpp.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?page=cp201008WageThef

 

 

WashingtonIndependent: Workers Rebuilding New Orleans Face Rampant Wage Theft

Jacinta Gonzalez, an organizer with the Congress of Day Laborers in New Orleans, tells a story about the abuse of workers rebuilding the city after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. She once met a man who went to his employer’s house to demand payment for his labor on a construction site after the employer stiffed him of his dues. The man’s boss came at him, swinging a hammer. The worker immediately called the police.

When they showed up, she says, the first thing they did was ask for his immigration status. “These are the sort of situations that prevent day laborers from asking for help when their wages are denied,” Gonzalez says.

The politics of immigration are thorny, but it is a simple truth that construction companies routinely use day laborers without checking their immigration status: Thousands of those workers have helped and are helping to rebuild New Orleans. But those workers commonly suffer abuse due to their immigration status, including threats of violence and wage theft. Despite the best efforts of workers’ rights groups, five years after the hurricane, advocates say abuse remains rampant. Now, those groups are calling for specific legislation to protect vulnerable workers — documented and not — and to make sure they get their due.

After Hurricane Katrina, the number of undocumented workers in New Orleans increased …

http://washingtonindependent.com/96411/workers-rebuilding-new-orleans-face-rampant-wage-theft

 

 

ConstructionCitizen: Provider of Company's Illegal Worker Payroll Cash Gets Prison Time

This month a Florida man was convicted of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business and was sentenced to two years in federal prison and forced to forfeit the money which he had gained for this crime.  Andrew D. Lemine of Paisley, FL had been cashing checks over a period of 5 years for John Trubenbach Construction at the grocery store which he owned.  He collected between 1 and 1.5 percent of the check amounts for this service, knowing that the construction company was using him in an attempt to hide the fact that they employed undocumented workers which they paid in cash in order to avoid paying worker's compensation and employment taxes. 

Lemine will now have plenty of time while serving his sentence to consider the consequences of enabling others to commit crimes such as worker misclassification and wage theft even if he did not directly commit these crimes himself.

The construction company…

http://constructioncitizen.com/blog/lemine-prison-time-given-provide-illegal-worker-payroll-cash/1008302

 

Change.org: Ware and Tear: Many Warehouse Workers Get Low Wages, No Benefits

When you're standing in a store aisle, trying to decide between brands of shampoo or kinds of soda, you probably don't think about how whatever you're buying arrived there in front of you. But getting it there was a process, and not one just done by machines. People worked to get you that product, and a lot of those people are warehouse workers.

I never considered how a store came to have the items on its shelf. That is, until I talked to Tory Moore, a former warehouse worker and now an organizer for a group called Warehouse Workers for Justice.

"Walmart makes billions of dollars. And those warehouse workers are getting treated like slaves. Some are getting less than minimum wage because they're getting paid by the truck," said Moore.

Moore worked in a warehouse for six years as a temp. That's right — six years as a "temporary" worker. A lot of warehouse worker are temps, even though there's nothing short term about their employment. And as temps, they get paid very low wages, sometimes…

http://uspoverty.change.org/blog/view/ware_and_tear_many_warehouse_workers_get_low_wages_no_benefits

 

 

ProgressIllinois: Will Co. Warehouse Workers Survey Reveals Harsh Conditions

Poverty wages and few benefits. Job-related injuries that result in workers getting disciplined or fired. Temporary positions that offer little hope of stability or advancement. Allegations of union busing.

Welcome to the world of workers who staff the hundreds of warehouses clustered near the nation's largest inland dry port, a sprawling inter-model distribution hub for consumer goods located in Will County, southwest of Chicago. In a new report, Warehouse Workers for Justice (WWJ) analyzes the present state of working conditions at these warehouses, some of the few places in the Chicagoland region offering new blue-collar jobs. But those jobs aren't providing for workers or their families, the report finds.

"The proportion of good jobs to low-paying positions, and more strikingly, direct hires to temporary positions reveals that this industry is heavily reliant on a large low-wage labor force," the report, titled "Bad Jobs in Good Movement: Warehouse Work in Will County, IL" says. "Specifically, the report found that the majority of warehouse workers were temps earning wages below the poverty level."

"Bad Jobs in Good Movement" is …

 

http://www.progressillinois.com/posts/content/2010/08/27/will-county-warehouse-workers-survey-details-harsh-conditions-booming-indus

 

TheSkanner: Wage Theft Robs Workers and the Economy

Payday arrived, but the paychecks did not.
The news broke last month of a dozen workers scrubbing floors at a Safeway warehouse in Clackamas who claim that the temp agency that hired them repeatedly failed to pay. Fortunately for them, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) says it's going after the temp agency for the unpaid wages. If that fails, BOLI says they will put Safeway on the hook for the wages owed.
Unfortunately, though it rarely makes news, wage theft is all too common these days. And it is making life more difficult for many workers who already earn too little.
Wage theft affects a significant share of the lowest-paid workers. In a landmark study published earlier this year, researchers from the National Employment Law Project surveyed workers in low-wage industries in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City. They found that a quarter of these workers -- one out of four -- were paid less than minimum wage in the previous work week.
The fleecing of workers did not end there. Of the…

http://www.theskanner.com/article/view/id/13293

 

La Unión del Pueblo Entero: Fuerza del Valle meets with Austin's Proyecto Defensa Laboral

Earlier this month, members of the Economic Stability and Jobs working group of the Equal Voice Network of the RGV held an important meeting with Proyecto Defensa Laboral (Workers Defense Project) to discuss collaboration between PDL and the new Valley workers center, Fuerza del Valle. Proyecto Defensa Laboral is building a campaign of construction workers across Texas for state policy changes that address the high rates of worker injury and death on the job. The Build a Better Texas Campaign will unite labor organizations, people of faith, community organizations and individuals who want just working conditions for the hard working men and women who build our communities.

Proyecto Defensa Laboral is a workers center in Austin that works closely with low wage and immigrant workers, both to address immediate needs—recovery of unpaid wages, injury compensation, workplace abuse—and to organize for long-term structural change. The center, which is at the forefront of the workers center movement, integrates political education and leadership development into their program, allowing the center to be run and directed by low wage and immigrant workers themselves….

http://lupergv.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/fuerza-del-valle-meets-with-austins-proyecto-defensa-laboral/

 

Immigrant Day Laborers Struggle in the Shadows of Hollywood

Approaching the U-Haul Store on Hollywood Boulevard is like entering a bustling market. A gaggle of workers swarm you, politely placing business cards into your hand, offering their services. They boast names like “Victor Faster,” “The Smart,” and “Orlando Moving.” Soaring bald eagles, 17-foot long trucks, and cartoons pushing loaded dollies adorn the glossy cards.

The men are day laborers who prowl the parking lot hoping to be hired by someone moving.

“We don’t have papers,” said 41-year-old Manuel – who, like everyone interviewed for this story, declined to give a last name. “So we come to the corners.”

Day laborers are a ubiquitous sight in Los Angeles. According to a UCLA study, an estimated 15,000 – 20,000 day laborers worked in Southern California in the late 1990s. Those numbers have likely risen in the past 20 years. Along with frequenting U-Haul stores, many wait in the parking lots of hardware giants like Home Depot looking for a day’s work. Few, if any, have papers.

http://www.towardfreedom.com/labor/2077-immigrant-day-laborers-struggle-in-the-shadows-of-hollywood

 

NationalLawJournal: Victory for domestic workers

On July 1, the New York State Assembly and Senate passed the landmark Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights. When Gov. David Paterson signs it, as he has committed to do, it will become the first such state legislation in the nation. As Colorado and California groups are already planning to push for a similar measure, the law may prove a bellwether for reform of household employees' lives.

The stepchildren of the working world — housekeepers, maids, nannies and others who perform low-prestige but vital tasks in private homes — have failed to enjoy virtually all the safeguards accorded most employees. In the federal realm, although the minimum wage and overtime sections of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) have applied to these workers facially since 1974, broad exemptions belie that coverage. Babysitters hired "on a casual basis" and companions of the infirm and elderly need not be paid minimum wage, and live-ins have no right to overtime.

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202470728982&src=EMC-Email&et=editorial&bu=National%20Law%20Journal&pt=NLJ.com-%20Daily%20Headlines&cn=20100826NLJ&kw=Victory%20for%20domestic%20workers&slreturn=1&hbxlogin=1

 

Legislature toughens requirements for paying last wages

The California Legislature has passed a measure, that if signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, establishes new criminal penalties against employers who, having the ability to pay, willfully fail to pay all wages due to discharged or quitting employees within 90 days.

Employers would be facing fines “not less than $1,000 and not more than $10,000, or by imprisonment in a county jail for not more than six months.”

“This bill closes a gap in California’s criminal laws that allows an unscrupulous employer to continue to refuse to pay wages due indefinitely without incurring any additional criminal liability,” says Assemblyman Juan Arambula (I-Fresno), author of the legislation.

Mr. Arambula says there is substantial evidence of the problem being widespread in California, particularly in the underground economy. He points to recent studies by UCLA, "Wage Theft and Workplace

Violations in Los Angeles,"(2010) and the Ford Foundation, "Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers," (2009) that found that more than one quarter of all workers surveyed were not being paid the minimum wage.

http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=16139