6 ms·

Reminder that wage theft is estimated to cost workers over $50 billion a year, more than the cost to victims of all robberies, burglaries, and larcenies combine

Reminder that wage theft is estimated to cost workers over $50 billion a year, more than the cost to victims of all robberies, burglaries, and larcenies combined: http://www.epi.org/publication/epidemic-wage-theft-costing-workers-hundreds/ http://www.epi.org/publication/epidemic-wage-theft-costing-w...

cperciva 10y ago
I'm not sure I see the relevance. A company failing to pay money it doesn't have is not the same thing as stealing money.
- moron4hire 10y ago
  Then it shouldn't have taken work it couldn't afford.
- manyxcxi 10y ago
  Why doesn't it have the funds, and is it just making sure to pay other people/vendors first? If there's money in the bank and it doesn't go to paying the employees or executing a maneuver to get the employees paid, its theft plain and simple. At that point leadership is deciding not to pay all that it can. If there's 0 in the bank, it's just bad business, but they can't do anything else, other than at least be forthright, which it seems like they refuse to be.
  - lithos 10y ago
    Individual employees don't have legal weight. Vendors do.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      That depends on the jurisdiction.
- knucklesandwich 10y ago
  IANAL, and from what I understand the laws about pay schedule vary by state, so I'm not going to make some claim I can't substantiate. But my guess is if you're 5 weeks late paying your employees you're most likely committing wage theft (probably also not paying payroll taxes on time). You have to liquidate assets, conduct layoffs, or close the business from what I understand. Crytek is also German, right? So I have no idea how that works there.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    I like the Norwegian approach: If you are not paid on time, you can sent a letter by recorded delivery, demanding payment. If you have not been paid within 4 weeks, you can have your employer served with a bankruptcy notice with two weeks warning. If they have not paid within that time, you can start bankruptcy proceedings, which will effectively put an administrator in charge. When the person starting bankruptcy proceedings is an employee with outstanding salary payments, said person can start proceedings with no money down, and the state covers all costs of the proceedings that can't be recovered from the company. On top of that, as long as your demand is timely, your salary up to a certain limit can be recovered from a government insurance system if the company is truly insolvent and the money can't be recovered from the estate. This strongly incentivises employees to not put up with any nonsense over unpaid salaries, as there are few costs involved, and while it will take some time to get your salary paid, you will get it eventually (and Norwegian unemployment benefits are substantial enough that getting them is certainly far better than waiting for an insolvent employer to drip-feed you payment). And as a result it strongly incentivises employers to prioritise salary payments or otherwise negotiate a suitable agreement with staff rather than just stringing people along, and quickly weed out insolvent companies that often would otherwise be able to drag things out by sweet-talking creditors - it's harder to string staff along when they can demand you bankrupt if you don't treat them properly.
    - merb 10y ago
      In germany it's different, you need to send a adhortatory letter and set a deadline, you can also require additional intereset and damages after 2-3 month you can actually stop working but still getting paid ("right of retention"). you can also go to court or resign without further notice and demand a compensation. Also if the employer is actually in a bankruptcy prceeding you can get social money up to a certain degree.
- coderdude 10y ago
  You are factually correct. The emotion-based downvoting is real.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Is he? So if I'm poor, can I go to a store, take a copy of a Crytek game, and claim "well, I just failed to pay money I don't have" and not be accused of stealing?
    - mark_edward 10y ago
      Lots of people believe in special exceptions for people in positions of power and wealth, like employers. Some of these people get to make laws.
    - manmal 10y ago
      Disagreeing with an opinion is not a reason to downvote on HN.
      - detaro 10y ago
        as far as I know this (nearly 9 year old) post saying otherwise is still the official ruling on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
        DanBC 10y ago
        Not this one, where downvote to disagree is described as a bit of a problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057347 Or this one, where pg suggests that people don't downvoting a grey post (I think people do downvote grey posts now, more than they used to.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683 this thread also has some comments about voting (and a bunch of other stuff, including ahem politics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696)
- codemac 10y ago
  The theft is of work, not of money. The money workers are not paid are wages lost due to theft of their work.
  - heysunshine123 10y ago
    Oh so it's like, the employer stole some work from you when you weren't looking? Look, I'm not saying not getting your wages is just fine. But the world sure could use less Socialism-tinged concept-twisting.
    - metilda 10y ago
      How is prosecuting time theft socialist? If you do work, you should be paid plain and simple, hence why it is a felony in most countries to alter timesheets or not pay your employees.
    - aethertron 10y ago
      >the employer stole some work from you when you weren't looking? Yeah, pretty much. They took work from you while you were (justifiably) assuming they were going to pay you. But you weren't looking at their true intentions or financial capability. What's twisted about the concept?
- scarmig 10y ago
  I've been mugged for $80 cash and my phone before. Call it $500. I've had my car broken into twice for, well, nothing. I don't remember exactly how much it was to repair, but at most $200. On the other hand, I've had a company steal around $15,000 from me. What's worse, some idiotic junkie, or some corrupt manager or investor who's buying an Audi on my and my coworkers' dime? If we're talking who deserves to hang, I know who certainly ranks higher on my own list.
  - tomhoward 10y ago
    Undoubtedly it's awful to be denied payment for work you've done in good faith, and the more so the lower your income and safety net. It's happened to me several times in my career, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But as cperciva pointed out, the Crytek case doesn't sound like a case of a "corrupt manager or investor who's buying an Audi on [their employees'] dime". It's a company with a history of both successes and difficulties, struggling to survive in a notoriously risky industry, and facing serious cash-flow problems. Of course we don't know the details of what's happening at executive level, and we can safely assume there's been some poor management and poor communication to staff. But we can also assume that the management is sincerely doing everything they can to keep the company afloat, to get their staff paid and to keep them employed well into the future, which is what the staff want too, given that the alternative is to shut down the company immediately and for everyone to be made unemployed. Conflating this situation with wage theft is quite unfair, at least in the absence of further evidence.
    - knucklesandwich 10y ago
      I don't think there's anything ethical about stringing your employees along for 3 months without pay, regardless of how successful you may have been in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13140938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13140938
      - tomhoward 10y ago
        That's a fair enough position to take. But that doesn't necessarily make it morally equivalent to robbery. Morality is a spectrum, and you can only make a judgement call on it when all the details are known, which right now they aren't.
- heysunshine123 10y ago
  Yes, that would be the common sense take on "wage theft". Unfortunately, HN is allergic to common sense.
  - metilda 10y ago
    What??? Employees are not a bank for a company to get a line of credit from, if a business does not pay wages that is theft, whether you are in the US, Germany, etc and you will be put in prison for doing so. Fucking with people's lives by not paying them cause your company is insolvent is morally unjustifiable, either you pay them for work done or tell them to not do said work.
  - sctb 10y ago
    Please don't take swipes against the community (which includes yourself) like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- partycoder 10y ago
  Well if you signed a contract, that's legally binding... that's why contracts exist in the first place. Then, besides contracts there are labor regulations. If you don't respect the terms of contract and labor regulations you are not abiding the law. And not abiding the law on purpose (as Crytek has consistently demonstrated over the years) is a very unethical business practice. Then, would you sue the company to get your money back? Exactly how, if you don't have any money.
- lvs 10y ago
  Working without pay has increasingly been called "wage theft" in casual parlance, but the applicable statute depends on your jurisdiction. In the US, failing to pay a worker for completed work is a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (and subsequent statute) if you fail to meet minimum wage levels, and it also probably runs afoul of state and local laws in various jurisdictions. As US labor laws are significantly weaker than their EU counterparts, it is primarily pursued a civil matter since it's obviously breach of contract -- if pursued at all. EU law protects employees from losing their wage claims in the event of employer insolvency. For most workers, the cost of seeking redress is not something they can afford to do, although local resources to file complaints may be available in some jurisdictions (such as SF). A common tactic of employer wage theft is misclassification of workers as independent contractors, a practice that is falling under increasing scrutiny from regulators.
- cyphar 10y ago
  You're right. It's more like fraud. Though you could argue (as others have) that the theft is not of money but rather of work -- your time an employee has a dollar value and thus can be stolen through outright fraud.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

cperciva 10y ago

I'm not sure I see the relevance. A company failing to pay money it doesn't have is not the same thing as stealing money.

moron4hire 10y ago
Then it shouldn't have taken work it couldn't afford.
manyxcxi 10y ago
Why doesn't it have the funds, and is it just making sure to pay other people/vendors first? If there's money in the bank and it doesn't go to paying the employees or executing a maneuver to get the employees paid, its theft plain and simple. At that point leadership is deciding not to pay all that it can. If there's 0 in the bank, it's just bad business, but they can't do anything else, other than at least be forthright, which it seems like they refuse to be.
- lithos 10y ago
  Individual employees don't have legal weight. Vendors do.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    That depends on the jurisdiction.
knucklesandwich 10y ago
IANAL, and from what I understand the laws about pay schedule vary by state, so I'm not going to make some claim I can't substantiate. But my guess is if you're 5 weeks late paying your employees you're most likely committing wage theft (probably also not paying payroll taxes on time). You have to liquidate assets, conduct layoffs, or close the business from what I understand. Crytek is also German, right? So I have no idea how that works there.
- vidarh 10y ago
  I like the Norwegian approach: If you are not paid on time, you can sent a letter by recorded delivery, demanding payment. If you have not been paid within 4 weeks, you can have your employer served with a bankruptcy notice with two weeks warning. If they have not paid within that time, you can start bankruptcy proceedings, which will effectively put an administrator in charge. When the person starting bankruptcy proceedings is an employee with outstanding salary payments, said person can start proceedings with no money down, and the state covers all costs of the proceedings that can't be recovered from the company. On top of that, as long as your demand is timely, your salary up to a certain limit can be recovered from a government insurance system if the company is truly insolvent and the money can't be recovered from the estate. This strongly incentivises employees to not put up with any nonsense over unpaid salaries, as there are few costs involved, and while it will take some time to get your salary paid, you will get it eventually (and Norwegian unemployment benefits are substantial enough that getting them is certainly far better than waiting for an insolvent employer to drip-feed you payment). And as a result it strongly incentivises employers to prioritise salary payments or otherwise negotiate a suitable agreement with staff rather than just stringing people along, and quickly weed out insolvent companies that often would otherwise be able to drag things out by sweet-talking creditors - it's harder to string staff along when they can demand you bankrupt if you don't treat them properly.
  - merb 10y ago
    In germany it's different, you need to send a adhortatory letter and set a deadline, you can also require additional intereset and damages after 2-3 month you can actually stop working but still getting paid ("right of retention"). you can also go to court or resign without further notice and demand a compensation. Also if the employer is actually in a bankruptcy prceeding you can get social money up to a certain degree.
coderdude 10y ago
You are factually correct. The emotion-based downvoting is real.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Is he? So if I'm poor, can I go to a store, take a copy of a Crytek game, and claim "well, I just failed to pay money I don't have" and not be accused of stealing?
  - mark_edward 10y ago
    Lots of people believe in special exceptions for people in positions of power and wealth, like employers. Some of these people get to make laws.
  - manmal 10y ago
    Disagreeing with an opinion is not a reason to downvote on HN.
    - detaro 10y ago
      as far as I know this (nearly 9 year old) post saying otherwise is still the official ruling on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
      - DanBC 10y ago
        Not this one, where downvote to disagree is described as a bit of a problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057347 Or this one, where pg suggests that people don't downvoting a grey post (I think people do downvote grey posts now, more than they used to.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683 this thread also has some comments about voting (and a bunch of other stuff, including ahem politics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696)
codemac 10y ago
The theft is of work, not of money. The money workers are not paid are wages lost due to theft of their work.
- heysunshine123 10y ago
  Oh so it's like, the employer stole some work from you when you weren't looking? Look, I'm not saying not getting your wages is just fine. But the world sure could use less Socialism-tinged concept-twisting.
  - metilda 10y ago
    How is prosecuting time theft socialist? If you do work, you should be paid plain and simple, hence why it is a felony in most countries to alter timesheets or not pay your employees.
  - aethertron 10y ago
    >the employer stole some work from you when you weren't looking? Yeah, pretty much. They took work from you while you were (justifiably) assuming they were going to pay you. But you weren't looking at their true intentions or financial capability. What's twisted about the concept?
scarmig 10y ago
I've been mugged for $80 cash and my phone before. Call it $500. I've had my car broken into twice for, well, nothing. I don't remember exactly how much it was to repair, but at most $200. On the other hand, I've had a company steal around $15,000 from me. What's worse, some idiotic junkie, or some corrupt manager or investor who's buying an Audi on my and my coworkers' dime? If we're talking who deserves to hang, I know who certainly ranks higher on my own list.
- tomhoward 10y ago
  Undoubtedly it's awful to be denied payment for work you've done in good faith, and the more so the lower your income and safety net. It's happened to me several times in my career, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But as cperciva pointed out, the Crytek case doesn't sound like a case of a "corrupt manager or investor who's buying an Audi on [their employees'] dime". It's a company with a history of both successes and difficulties, struggling to survive in a notoriously risky industry, and facing serious cash-flow problems. Of course we don't know the details of what's happening at executive level, and we can safely assume there's been some poor management and poor communication to staff. But we can also assume that the management is sincerely doing everything they can to keep the company afloat, to get their staff paid and to keep them employed well into the future, which is what the staff want too, given that the alternative is to shut down the company immediately and for everyone to be made unemployed. Conflating this situation with wage theft is quite unfair, at least in the absence of further evidence.
  - knucklesandwich 10y ago
    I don't think there's anything ethical about stringing your employees along for 3 months without pay, regardless of how successful you may have been in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13140938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13140938
    - tomhoward 10y ago
      That's a fair enough position to take. But that doesn't necessarily make it morally equivalent to robbery. Morality is a spectrum, and you can only make a judgement call on it when all the details are known, which right now they aren't.
heysunshine123 10y ago
Yes, that would be the common sense take on "wage theft". Unfortunately, HN is allergic to common sense.
- metilda 10y ago
  What??? Employees are not a bank for a company to get a line of credit from, if a business does not pay wages that is theft, whether you are in the US, Germany, etc and you will be put in prison for doing so. Fucking with people's lives by not paying them cause your company is insolvent is morally unjustifiable, either you pay them for work done or tell them to not do said work.
- sctb 10y ago
  Please don't take swipes against the community (which includes yourself) like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
partycoder 10y ago
Well if you signed a contract, that's legally binding... that's why contracts exist in the first place. Then, besides contracts there are labor regulations. If you don't respect the terms of contract and labor regulations you are not abiding the law. And not abiding the law on purpose (as Crytek has consistently demonstrated over the years) is a very unethical business practice. Then, would you sue the company to get your money back? Exactly how, if you don't have any money.
lvs 10y ago
Working without pay has increasingly been called "wage theft" in casual parlance, but the applicable statute depends on your jurisdiction. In the US, failing to pay a worker for completed work is a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (and subsequent statute) if you fail to meet minimum wage levels, and it also probably runs afoul of state and local laws in various jurisdictions. As US labor laws are significantly weaker than their EU counterparts, it is primarily pursued a civil matter since it's obviously breach of contract -- if pursued at all. EU law protects employees from losing their wage claims in the event of employer insolvency. For most workers, the cost of seeking redress is not something they can afford to do, although local resources to file complaints may be available in some jurisdictions (such as SF). A common tactic of employer wage theft is misclassification of workers as independent contractors, a practice that is falling under increasing scrutiny from regulators.
cyphar 10y ago
You're right. It's more like fraud. Though you could argue (as others have) that the theft is not of money but rather of work -- your time an employee has a dollar value and thus can be stolen through outright fraud.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]