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The article doesn't really seem to focus on the reason I've most seen this go unreported - the massive power asymmetry involved. It touches on it, indirectly, b

The article doesn't really seem to focus on the reason I've most seen this go unreported - the massive power asymmetry involved. It touches on it, indirectly, but the message I got was "people need to know their rights"... A lot of people I've met who have had this happen know it's not legal, but they also know the odds of anything happening except them getting fired are slim to none, and even if it does, it'd be years before anything ameliorated that. And these people cannot afford to go that long without a job. So the risk/reward is completely broken for people to report anyone, even if they know their rights, because pragmatically, they absolutely cannot afford the risk. It might be a relatively cost-effective thing, depending on how many reports they have on a backlog to investigate, to just say the gov't will pay your income if you get fired in between reporting wage theft and them resolving the case either way, for people making below $SOME_NUMBER - a lot of wage theft happens for people who make relatively little, and/or are in contracting positions where you're not getting benefits, so as gov't funding numbers go, paying whatever percentage of people come to you and report "THIS IS HORRIBLE AND I GOT FIRED FOR TELLING YOU :C", if you put a ceiling on how much you can be paying per person, is probably cheaper than the time to carefully triage who to pay, while also severely mitigating the risk for the most vulnerable people reporting...and if you implemented useful amounts of damages for people who get caught doing this, and do enough enforcement, you can probably recoup the cost. (It doesn't help at higher-paid roles, or if blackballing happens in an industry, but that's a more complex problem to try and mitigate...)

nothercastle 3y ago
If you report you get blackballed. So the payoff has to justify that. 5-10x lost wages. Maybe more. Also 20x plus punishments for anyone caught blackballing because it’s so damn hard to catch the consequences need to be extremely harsh
- rincebrain 3y ago
  There's an incentive problem, though. You can't make the people wait on you paying them until after the resolution, or they have the same insecurity. But you can't pay everyone that much in damages upfront, probably. So you may give them a larger payout later, but a fixed payout now so they don't think it's purely a lottery roll, but then what happens if the case is over and you said no _and_ they're blackballed? Do you use them being unhireable elsewhere as evidence of it? And then, if they switch industries because it's more reliable to get a job in another industry, does that serve as evidence they're not blackballed and you should stop paying them? So you'd probably want to make it some nontrivial percentage tied to the company's pre-tax+expenses income, but then you'd need to worry about them playing games with where the money goes, and also the gov't incentive to then seize huge piles of money. The tempting answer feels like "kill the company" amounts of money, but in a lot of cases, putting the entire company out of work would be extremely disruptive to the region, and then you'd have other workers resenting anyone who reported it.
  - nothercastle 3y ago
    You could pierce the corporate lability shield and make that money come out of the personal income of the owners that would make it sting. Or a ratcheting system of fines where 1 is no big deal but if you catch 3 you are out. Designing reasonable incentive structures is a really hard job though most people are incapable of thinking through all the loopholes

nothercastle 3y ago

If you report you get blackballed. So the payoff has to justify that. 5-10x lost wages. Maybe more. Also 20x plus punishments for anyone caught blackballing because it’s so damn hard to catch the consequences need to be extremely harsh

rincebrain 3y ago
There's an incentive problem, though. You can't make the people wait on you paying them until after the resolution, or they have the same insecurity. But you can't pay everyone that much in damages upfront, probably. So you may give them a larger payout later, but a fixed payout now so they don't think it's purely a lottery roll, but then what happens if the case is over and you said no _and_ they're blackballed? Do you use them being unhireable elsewhere as evidence of it? And then, if they switch industries because it's more reliable to get a job in another industry, does that serve as evidence they're not blackballed and you should stop paying them? So you'd probably want to make it some nontrivial percentage tied to the company's pre-tax+expenses income, but then you'd need to worry about them playing games with where the money goes, and also the gov't incentive to then seize huge piles of money. The tempting answer feels like "kill the company" amounts of money, but in a lot of cases, putting the entire company out of work would be extremely disruptive to the region, and then you'd have other workers resenting anyone who reported it.
- nothercastle 3y ago
  You could pierce the corporate lability shield and make that money come out of the personal income of the owners that would make it sting. Or a ratcheting system of fines where 1 is no big deal but if you catch 3 you are out. Designing reasonable incentive structures is a really hard job though most people are incapable of thinking through all the loopholes