6 ms·

How would you suggest that police get involved in wage theft?

mikem170 4y ago
Maybe the same as when someone writes a bad check? It's my understanding that people get arrested for that, it's not left just to lawyers and civil contract courts (which not everyone can afford). Maybe also make wage theft easier to prove, with a required paper trail like an employment contract and signed time sheets, more investigators, etc. I'd be curious how other countries might handle this better, there's often places that have already done a good job of figuring stuff like this out. The cynic in me worries that dollars count more than votes, and that the system is not as interested in protecting employees as it is protecting employers.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  >>Maybe the same as when someone writes a bad check? That does not happen, not at the level of say shoplifting or something At most you can make a complaint, which will go to a prosecutor which will then decide if they want to file criminal charges, at which point the police would arrest someone. Which rarely happens for a single bad check. It is almost always CIVIL unless there is some other crime involved like identity theft, even then it would have to be wide scale You know what, that is the same process for Wage Theft. You file a complaint with the dept of labor, the dept of labor will investigate and if the problem is wide scale they will issue fines or even criminal indictment if they view it as malicious >Maybe also make wage theft easier to prove, with a required paper trail like an employment contract and signed time sheets, more investigators, etc. The problem here is wage theft is not often as cut and dry as you make it out to be, most often is not an employer refusing to pay wages or writting a bad check for wages. It manifests as forcing an employee to work during their lunch or break, refusing to pay earned vacation time/PTO when someone quits, paying strait time instead of OT rates for Overtime, misidentifying an employee as exempt denying them OT, etc. These are all things that are harder to prove and in some cases can be honest mistakes.
  - mikem170 4y ago
    I don't flat out argue with anything you are saying. It would be difficult to do a better job of catching wage theft. But if we're not going to put more effort into catching those criminals, why are we ok with putting more effort into catching shoplifters? Why are we allowing poorly trained armed security to roam public streets and sometimes harass, beat up, or shoot law abiding citizens, to the point that local prosecutors are frustrated with what is going on? How come we allow stuff like this, pulling out the stops for shoplifters, but not wage-theives? How come people argue in favor of the one but not the other?
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      You have created a Strawman in your head and now debating agaist that strawman and not anything anyone has said here or anywhere that I am aware of This whataboutism around wage theft has no bearing on this converation nor is anyone in either government, or here in this discussion ever talked about not taking wage theft seriously When wage theft is reported it gets investigated, and as the studies people have posted here show often gets recovered. The problem here and why you are seeing private security is because unlike with wage theft when someone reports shoplifting or other property crime it is often completely ignored, with out even a response at all from the government. You have this world view that is the exact opposite of reality, where by you believe wage theft is completely ignored by everyone but entire armies are fighting shoplifting how about instead of engaging with whataboutism, strawmans and redherrings we talk about the actual issues of criminality
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Thank you!
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        mikem170 4y ago
        I don't think that the parent understood where I was coming from when he called my position a what-about strawman. I'm sure that was in good part because I didn't do a good job of communicating what I was thinking. I attempted to fix that with additional information. Understanding what others are thinking and why is often helpful, especially in a democracy.
FrontierPsych 4y ago
Just like any other theft. If an employer is shown to commit wage theft, then they are arrested. I can pull up my GPS on my phone and show them exactly where I was during the prior week, how many hours, and if the hours don't match the paycheck, the owner gets arrested, brought to jail, booked for theft, has to hire an attorney, may get convicted and if it is a regular habitual offender type of thing, maybe get life in prison. A 33-year-old black man named Curtis Wilkerson was waiting for his girlfriend at a mall. He went into a department store and put a pair of socks in his shopping bag, and walked out. A $2.50 pair of ordinary tube socks. He was put in jail for 25 to life because he had 2 prior convictions - being a "lookout" in a robbery. But parole is denied 80% of the time, and governors override the parole boards decision to parole them at 50% of the time, he wouldn't get out in 25 years most likely. He also got fined $2,500 for the pair of $2.50 pair of socks. Should a wage theft of $2,000 fine the manager or company $2,000,000 which is the same ratio? Sounds good to me, it would put a stop to wage theft fast. In prison, he earns $20/month, and the state takes $11 every month to pay that $2,500 fine. They take over half his earnings - do that to a business. He won't be able to pay the $2,500 fine off until he is 90 years old. Another guy got life for stealing a slice of pizza. A guy who went away forever for lifting a pair of baby shoes. One got 50 to life for helping himself to five children’s videotapes from Kmart. One guy got life for possessing 0.14 grams of meth? Why not life in prison for wage theft? How is it any different than anything else? Saying they "didn't know" or "was a mistake" is like a shoplifter saying the exact same thing, but the shoplifter is prosecuted anyways if they say that.

Maybe the same as when someone writes a bad check? It's my understanding that people get arrested for that, it's not left just to lawyers and civil contract courts (which not everyone can afford). Maybe also make wage theft easier to prove, with a required paper trail like an employment contract and signed time sheets, more investigators, etc. I'd be curious how other countries might handle this better, there's often places that have already done a good job of figuring stuff like this out. The cynic in me worries that dollars count more than votes, and that the system is not as interested in protecting employees as it is protecting employers.

phpisthebest 4y ago
>>Maybe the same as when someone writes a bad check? That does not happen, not at the level of say shoplifting or something At most you can make a complaint, which will go to a prosecutor which will then decide if they want to file criminal charges, at which point the police would arrest someone. Which rarely happens for a single bad check. It is almost always CIVIL unless there is some other crime involved like identity theft, even then it would have to be wide scale You know what, that is the same process for Wage Theft. You file a complaint with the dept of labor, the dept of labor will investigate and if the problem is wide scale they will issue fines or even criminal indictment if they view it as malicious >Maybe also make wage theft easier to prove, with a required paper trail like an employment contract and signed time sheets, more investigators, etc. The problem here is wage theft is not often as cut and dry as you make it out to be, most often is not an employer refusing to pay wages or writting a bad check for wages. It manifests as forcing an employee to work during their lunch or break, refusing to pay earned vacation time/PTO when someone quits, paying strait time instead of OT rates for Overtime, misidentifying an employee as exempt denying them OT, etc. These are all things that are harder to prove and in some cases can be honest mistakes.
- mikem170 4y ago
  I don't flat out argue with anything you are saying. It would be difficult to do a better job of catching wage theft. But if we're not going to put more effort into catching those criminals, why are we ok with putting more effort into catching shoplifters? Why are we allowing poorly trained armed security to roam public streets and sometimes harass, beat up, or shoot law abiding citizens, to the point that local prosecutors are frustrated with what is going on? How come we allow stuff like this, pulling out the stops for shoplifters, but not wage-theives? How come people argue in favor of the one but not the other?
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    You have created a Strawman in your head and now debating agaist that strawman and not anything anyone has said here or anywhere that I am aware of This whataboutism around wage theft has no bearing on this converation nor is anyone in either government, or here in this discussion ever talked about not taking wage theft seriously When wage theft is reported it gets investigated, and as the studies people have posted here show often gets recovered. The problem here and why you are seeing private security is because unlike with wage theft when someone reports shoplifting or other property crime it is often completely ignored, with out even a response at all from the government. You have this world view that is the exact opposite of reality, where by you believe wage theft is completely ignored by everyone but entire armies are fighting shoplifting how about instead of engaging with whataboutism, strawmans and redherrings we talk about the actual issues of criminality
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      Thank you!
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - mikem170 4y ago
        I don't think that the parent understood where I was coming from when he called my position a what-about strawman. I'm sure that was in good part because I didn't do a good job of communicating what I was thinking. I attempted to fix that with additional information. Understanding what others are thinking and why is often helpful, especially in a democracy.

FrontierPsych 4y ago

Just like any other theft. If an employer is shown to commit wage theft, then they are arrested. I can pull up my GPS on my phone and show them exactly where I was during the prior week, how many hours, and if the hours don't match the paycheck, the owner gets arrested, brought to jail, booked for theft, has to hire an attorney, may get convicted and if it is a regular habitual offender type of thing, maybe get life in prison. A 33-year-old black man named Curtis Wilkerson was waiting for his girlfriend at a mall. He went into a department store and put a pair of socks in his shopping bag, and walked out. A $2.50 pair of ordinary tube socks. He was put in jail for 25 to life because he had 2 prior convictions - being a "lookout" in a robbery. But parole is denied 80% of the time, and governors override the parole boards decision to parole them at 50% of the time, he wouldn't get out in 25 years most likely. He also got fined $2,500 for the pair of $2.50 pair of socks. Should a wage theft of $2,000 fine the manager or company $2,000,000 which is the same ratio? Sounds good to me, it would put a stop to wage theft fast. In prison, he earns $20/month, and the state takes $11 every month to pay that $2,500 fine. They take over half his earnings - do that to a business. He won't be able to pay the $2,500 fine off until he is 90 years old. Another guy got life for stealing a slice of pizza. A guy who went away forever for lifting a pair of baby shoes. One got 50 to life for helping himself to five children’s videotapes from Kmart. One guy got life for possessing 0.14 grams of meth? Why not life in prison for wage theft? How is it any different than anything else? Saying they "didn't know" or "was a mistake" is like a shoplifter saying the exact same thing, but the shoplifter is prosecuted anyways if they say that.