6 ms·

One of the clearest illustrations of the deeply injust structural power imbalance at the heart of our economic system is wage theft. If your employer withholds

One of the clearest illustrations of the deeply injust structural power imbalance at the heart of our economic system is wage theft. If your employer withholds $20 from your paycheck it's a civil violation of contract law. You have to go through an extremely onerous and convoluted process that very likely won't go anywhere. If, in response, you decide to pay yourself by taking $20 from the till, that's criminal theft. You will be arrested by the police, sent to jail, and charged in the criminal justice system.

iforgotpassword 3y ago
That's because in one case you're stealing from an individual, and in the other from a business. The former group is usually not well organized, uneducated wrt the according laws, and too scared to go against the guy paying them. Their discontent with the establishment is usually unleashed in the most nonsensical ways, like we saw during covid. Anti-maskers/-vaxxers had a disproportionate amount of people from these kind of low-skilled exploited jobs.
geodel 3y ago
Well a simple reason could be probability of person take money and disappearing vs institution/business withhold person's money and disappearing. To be clear I am not defending it. If anything I was on receiving end of this behavior from a douchebag employer.
MOARDONGZPLZ 3y ago
Not quite true, DOL will go to bat for you and fine the employer and get you paid. Violations of labor law are not simply small claims civil matters. Some employers get large fines.
- dbingham 3y ago
  The whole article is about how DOL mostly doesn't go to bat for people. Of $50 bil in wage theft, DOL recovered ~$3 bil.
  - brightball 3y ago
    Ultimately dealing with the DOL will hurt the employer financially, but the employee probably won’t see anything from it. The lawyers will though.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      > Ultimately dealing with the DOL will hurt the employer financially It looks like corporations make far more money stealing from workers than they'd ever lose in their dealings with the DOL. If enforcement were inevitable and fines high enough to actually hurt no company would ever dare steal from their employees, but because they do (and at such large scales) we know that they make more money from theft than they risk losing by stealing.
      - brightball 3y ago
        It's not about the fines. It's about the cost of hiring attorneys to deal with the DOL complaint itself. I agree that scale matters though.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    Often times it is due to the employee not properly documenting anything. They still have to prove they are owed the money. you cannot just go to the DOL and claim you owed something with no proof.
- skort 3y ago
  The problem is that when the fine is the "cost of doing business" nothing really changes. Criminal charges/jail time (i.e. holding people responsible for these violations) might help keep businesses in check.
- MSFT_Edging 3y ago
  I think the point is the employer simply gets a fine while the reverse would see criminal penalty. This lopsided application of the law shows it was rigged from the start. We should be holding managers and whoever gave them the order criminally liable.
alkonaut 3y ago
I wonder if there has ever been a case (I'm sure there has) where someone stole say a $20 from the register, because the manager owed them $20. And whether the fact they could prove the manager owed them money made any difference in the theft case.
- teeray 3y ago
  Courts generally take a dim view of “self help,” however just it may be.
  - anon291 3y ago
    Well they shouldn't. Legislators should make recovery on debt for employees be self-service just like normal debt recovery. Really there ought to be a pretty straightforwards system. You go to the local court showing your employment contract and proof of hours worked. Court contacts employer same day (could be automated phone system or e-mail) with X days to respond (ideally like 1 or 2). If no response, or no satisfactory response, you are given a certificate you can take to the business's bank to withdraw from their accounts directly, just like a wage garnishment. Why won't legislators think of solutions to such basic issues, instead of spending time on endless culture war nonsense? This seems like one of these things that ought to be 'easy.' Also allow for substantial interest penalties, like seven percent per day or something.
    - crazygringo 3y ago
      I don't understand. This is what courts do, just not as fast. If it were "self-service" as you suggest, it would be open to abuse of tons of people falsely claiming wage theft, to make an easy buck. Companies can't be required to respond in 1 or 2 days. They need time to gather facts, especially when people can be out sick, busy with other work, etc. And they need to be able to present them to a judge and allow for cross-examination. Courts are designed to be fair and protect the rights of both sides, not to be fast. Also I don't know what you mean about "normal debt recovery" being "self-service"? It isn't.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
teeray 3y ago
Justice delayed is justice denied. There should be an express lane where you collect those wages from social security and employers just get an unavoidable tax bill.
- nickff 3y ago
  The 'express lane' would be rife with fraud, unless you re-implement a court system, in which case it'll be slow again.
  - teeray 3y ago
    Right, but at least you’d be defrauding the federal government, which tends to be punished readily enough that there’s an actual deterrent.
Chris2048 3y ago
That's b/c they are entirely different situations. You can't "pay yourself" taking money from the till, it isn't pay, it's just theft you justify taking from the wages you believe you are owed. You are only owed those wages on the basis of a contract, and that contract won't allow you to take anything from the till. Theft is "the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention to permanently deprive the other of it". Not being paid isn't the same, no matter if you try to equate the two on a numerical basis. It would be more accurate to call "wage theft" as "labour theft". But then, labour isn't as easily stolen outside a contract. The fact is, if you aren't compensated, you can stop providing labour, and any right to a wage usually has a contract associated that can be taken to court. Someone stealing from a till can steal potentially unlimited amounts before an employer discovers it, and there may be no record proving what is missing. It's not great how hard it is to recover unpaid wages, but there's no injustice in theft being criminal in comparison. Also, there are circumstances that contract violations can lead to criminal charges (e.g. fraud), but in general if a valid contract is in places, penalties are not criminal (e.g. monetary).
- NegativeK 3y ago
  What you're saying makes sense from a procedural sense, but the article pointing out that there's 50B in stolen wages means that the punishment for wage theft isn't aligned with what's needed. In fact, the power imbalance between employer and employee means that it's far harder to for employees to recover their wages or punish the other party -- which, to me, means that the state needs to do even more to help.
  - Chris2048 3y ago
    50B in stolen wages is an estimate. The devil is in the details, on how they came up with that number. There is a power imbalance, there should be more done to take employers to court. I'd be more interested in the effect on long-term low waged employees, than temporary high-schoolers.
greenie_beans 3y ago
that's because the state is designed to protect capital and not its citizens. we can use the process of government to change that.
- erellsworth 3y ago
  The government is run entirely by capitalists, so good luck with that.
  - greenie_beans 3y ago
    yup. that's what needs to change first.
    - Zpalmtree 3y ago
      starves to death
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - greenie_beans 3y ago
        what is this even talking about? it's a snarky comment trying to conflate democratic control of government with communism, i know, but it's ignorant, not funny, nor is it an original joke. i enjoy edgy humor, but let's stop making jokes about the tragic fate of people in the USSR in an attempt to make an ideological point.
crazygringo 3y ago
To be fair, it also works the other way -- If you withhold $20 from a bill payment, the worst that happens is collections. The company has to go through an extremely onerous and convoluted process that very likely won't go anywhere. If, in response, a company employee decides to settle the bill themselves by visiting your home and stealing $20 from your wallet, that's criminal theft. They will be arrested by the police, sent to jail, and charged in the criminal justice system. In the end, the imbalance isn't fundamentally one between employers and employees -- it's the fact that stealing is a very different situation than not paying money owed. Of course it does benefit employers in the end, since they get to receive work now and pay later. Which makes you wonder why it's never become a thing for workers to receive their daily/weekly/biweekly wages or salary at the start of the period? In which case any wage theft would come from quitting the job before the end of the period.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Because business owners and politicians working for the economy decide that. It’s fun to come up with rules that would fix imbalance but curious how you think such rules can happen without deeper (however achievable) changes to society predicating them outside current norms (eg voting and waiting; maybe organizing around getting more people to vote and wait with you)
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    Voters decide things too. But that's not just a hot-button issue for any voter I've ever met. Why not? It actually wouldn't be too hard to implement without wage theft in either direction -- mandate some kind of escrow functionality by law, built into direct deposit. In other words, if you work daily, the money is deposited in "escrow mode" at the start of your shift, and you can verify it in your banking app. But it's not released until you clock out. Or if your salary is every two weeks, it's deposited in escrow mode at the start of the period. At the end of the business day each day, a day's proportion is automatically released unless the bank is informed that your employment has been terminated. But the point is that businesses could never try to save money by not paying their employees, because they couldn't get the money back anyways. If your boss doesn't approve that you completed the day's work when you actually did, the money stays in escrow until it gets settled by a court. So I don't buy that it's just because business owners and politicians "decide" things. If voters wanted what I just described, it could easily happen. But I just came up with this proposal on my own -- I've never heard it described by anyone. It's not something voters seem to care about. Why not?

iforgotpassword 3y ago

That's because in one case you're stealing from an individual, and in the other from a business. The former group is usually not well organized, uneducated wrt the according laws, and too scared to go against the guy paying them. Their discontent with the establishment is usually unleashed in the most nonsensical ways, like we saw during covid. Anti-maskers/-vaxxers had a disproportionate amount of people from these kind of low-skilled exploited jobs.

geodel 3y ago

Well a simple reason could be probability of person take money and disappearing vs institution/business withhold person's money and disappearing. To be clear I am not defending it. If anything I was on receiving end of this behavior from a douchebag employer.

MOARDONGZPLZ 3y ago

Not quite true, DOL will go to bat for you and fine the employer and get you paid. Violations of labor law are not simply small claims civil matters. Some employers get large fines.

dbingham 3y ago
The whole article is about how DOL mostly doesn't go to bat for people. Of $50 bil in wage theft, DOL recovered ~$3 bil.
- brightball 3y ago
  Ultimately dealing with the DOL will hurt the employer financially, but the employee probably won’t see anything from it. The lawyers will though.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > Ultimately dealing with the DOL will hurt the employer financially It looks like corporations make far more money stealing from workers than they'd ever lose in their dealings with the DOL. If enforcement were inevitable and fines high enough to actually hurt no company would ever dare steal from their employees, but because they do (and at such large scales) we know that they make more money from theft than they risk losing by stealing.
    - brightball 3y ago
      It's not about the fines. It's about the cost of hiring attorneys to deal with the DOL complaint itself. I agree that scale matters though.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  Often times it is due to the employee not properly documenting anything. They still have to prove they are owed the money. you cannot just go to the DOL and claim you owed something with no proof.
skort 3y ago
The problem is that when the fine is the "cost of doing business" nothing really changes. Criminal charges/jail time (i.e. holding people responsible for these violations) might help keep businesses in check.
MSFT_Edging 3y ago
I think the point is the employer simply gets a fine while the reverse would see criminal penalty. This lopsided application of the law shows it was rigged from the start. We should be holding managers and whoever gave them the order criminally liable.

alkonaut 3y ago

I wonder if there has ever been a case (I'm sure there has) where someone stole say a $20 from the register, because the manager owed them $20. And whether the fact they could prove the manager owed them money made any difference in the theft case.

teeray 3y ago
Courts generally take a dim view of “self help,” however just it may be.
- anon291 3y ago
  Well they shouldn't. Legislators should make recovery on debt for employees be self-service just like normal debt recovery. Really there ought to be a pretty straightforwards system. You go to the local court showing your employment contract and proof of hours worked. Court contacts employer same day (could be automated phone system or e-mail) with X days to respond (ideally like 1 or 2). If no response, or no satisfactory response, you are given a certificate you can take to the business's bank to withdraw from their accounts directly, just like a wage garnishment. Why won't legislators think of solutions to such basic issues, instead of spending time on endless culture war nonsense? This seems like one of these things that ought to be 'easy.' Also allow for substantial interest penalties, like seven percent per day or something.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    I don't understand. This is what courts do, just not as fast. If it were "self-service" as you suggest, it would be open to abuse of tons of people falsely claiming wage theft, to make an easy buck. Companies can't be required to respond in 1 or 2 days. They need time to gather facts, especially when people can be out sick, busy with other work, etc. And they need to be able to present them to a judge and allow for cross-examination. Courts are designed to be fair and protect the rights of both sides, not to be fast. Also I don't know what you mean about "normal debt recovery" being "self-service"? It isn't.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago

teeray 3y ago

Justice delayed is justice denied. There should be an express lane where you collect those wages from social security and employers just get an unavoidable tax bill.

nickff 3y ago
The 'express lane' would be rife with fraud, unless you re-implement a court system, in which case it'll be slow again.
- teeray 3y ago
  Right, but at least you’d be defrauding the federal government, which tends to be punished readily enough that there’s an actual deterrent.

Chris2048 3y ago

That's b/c they are entirely different situations. You can't "pay yourself" taking money from the till, it isn't pay, it's just theft you justify taking from the wages you believe you are owed. You are only owed those wages on the basis of a contract, and that contract won't allow you to take anything from the till. Theft is "the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention to permanently deprive the other of it". Not being paid isn't the same, no matter if you try to equate the two on a numerical basis. It would be more accurate to call "wage theft" as "labour theft". But then, labour isn't as easily stolen outside a contract. The fact is, if you aren't compensated, you can stop providing labour, and any right to a wage usually has a contract associated that can be taken to court. Someone stealing from a till can steal potentially unlimited amounts before an employer discovers it, and there may be no record proving what is missing. It's not great how hard it is to recover unpaid wages, but there's no injustice in theft being criminal in comparison. Also, there are circumstances that contract violations can lead to criminal charges (e.g. fraud), but in general if a valid contract is in places, penalties are not criminal (e.g. monetary).

NegativeK 3y ago
What you're saying makes sense from a procedural sense, but the article pointing out that there's 50B in stolen wages means that the punishment for wage theft isn't aligned with what's needed. In fact, the power imbalance between employer and employee means that it's far harder to for employees to recover their wages or punish the other party -- which, to me, means that the state needs to do even more to help.
- Chris2048 3y ago
  50B in stolen wages is an estimate. The devil is in the details, on how they came up with that number. There is a power imbalance, there should be more done to take employers to court. I'd be more interested in the effect on long-term low waged employees, than temporary high-schoolers.

greenie_beans 3y ago

that's because the state is designed to protect capital and not its citizens. we can use the process of government to change that.

erellsworth 3y ago
The government is run entirely by capitalists, so good luck with that.
- greenie_beans 3y ago
  yup. that's what needs to change first.
  - Zpalmtree 3y ago
    starves to death
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - greenie_beans 3y ago
      what is this even talking about? it's a snarky comment trying to conflate democratic control of government with communism, i know, but it's ignorant, not funny, nor is it an original joke. i enjoy edgy humor, but let's stop making jokes about the tragic fate of people in the USSR in an attempt to make an ideological point.

crazygringo 3y ago

To be fair, it also works the other way -- If you withhold $20 from a bill payment, the worst that happens is collections. The company has to go through an extremely onerous and convoluted process that very likely won't go anywhere. If, in response, a company employee decides to settle the bill themselves by visiting your home and stealing $20 from your wallet, that's criminal theft. They will be arrested by the police, sent to jail, and charged in the criminal justice system. In the end, the imbalance isn't fundamentally one between employers and employees -- it's the fact that stealing is a very different situation than not paying money owed. Of course it does benefit employers in the end, since they get to receive work now and pay later. Which makes you wonder why it's never become a thing for workers to receive their daily/weekly/biweekly wages or salary at the start of the period? In which case any wage theft would come from quitting the job before the end of the period.

wahnfrieden 3y ago
Because business owners and politicians working for the economy decide that. It’s fun to come up with rules that would fix imbalance but curious how you think such rules can happen without deeper (however achievable) changes to society predicating them outside current norms (eg voting and waiting; maybe organizing around getting more people to vote and wait with you)
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Voters decide things too. But that's not just a hot-button issue for any voter I've ever met. Why not? It actually wouldn't be too hard to implement without wage theft in either direction -- mandate some kind of escrow functionality by law, built into direct deposit. In other words, if you work daily, the money is deposited in "escrow mode" at the start of your shift, and you can verify it in your banking app. But it's not released until you clock out. Or if your salary is every two weeks, it's deposited in escrow mode at the start of the period. At the end of the business day each day, a day's proportion is automatically released unless the bank is informed that your employment has been terminated. But the point is that businesses could never try to save money by not paying their employees, because they couldn't get the money back anyways. If your boss doesn't approve that you completed the day's work when you actually did, the money stays in escrow until it gets settled by a court. So I don't buy that it's just because business owners and politicians "decide" things. If voters wanted what I just described, it could easily happen. But I just came up with this proposal on my own -- I've never heard it described by anyone. It's not something voters seem to care about. Why not?