It's difficult to imagine anything more basic to a free economy than the right of an employee to be paid for his or her work. Yet this fundamental right is violated in New York's low-wage industries as a matter of routine. Research from the National Employment Law Project concludes that a fifth of the city's low-wage workers - an estimated 317,200 working New Yorkers - are paid less than the minimum wage in a given week. Even more are cheated out of the tips they've earned, their overtime pay, or the meal breaks they're legally entitled to. It's not a case of a few "bad apples" but a well-documented, pervasive pattern of wage theft throughout the city.
In March, I wrote about powerful state legislation drafted and promoted by community organization Make the Road New York to cut the state's epidemic of wage theft. The Wage Theft Prevention Act stiffens penalties for cheating employees out of wages, encourages workers to come forward, and provides new avenues for investigating and prosecuting wage theft cases - and ensuring violators will pay up. …
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-traub/albany-last-chance-to-sto_b_781736.html
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