11 ms·

More Workers Are Claiming ‘Wage Theft’

64 points by akg_67 12y ago

charlieflowers 12y ago
Disgusting, but not surprising. A corporation is a soulless entity with one goal: maximize profits. That doesn't produce ethical, human-friendly actions.
- gress 12y ago
  Not really - a corporation is a group of people. Sometimes those in control of it have no goal other than profit maximization, but by no means always.
  - Absentinsomniac 12y ago
    Well, often if those running a corporation do not have profit maximization as their primary goal, they are voted out by investors. Essentially, maximizing profit becomes the job of the leaders as requested by those invested. There are some exceptions where corporations are profitable by targeting towards environmental things, or other causes, but the bottom line of profit is still there... Especially so with larger corporations.
    - wutbrodo 12y ago
      I suspect those downvoting gress don't understand what he's saying at all. His claim that "sometimes", thos ein charge aren't only thinking about profit maximization is excluding the case you're describing, where "those in charge" is some combination of investors and the actual execs (specifically, in your example, "those in charge" _are_ in favor of profit maximization). There are a fair few examples in tech where founders have managed to hold on to a disproportionate amount of control and can much more accurately said to be fully "in charge", and those are the cases gress is claiming exists.
      - gress 12y ago
        Thanks - that is part of what I'm saying. Also, as another point, 'profit maximization' is predicting the future, and there is a lot of room for different views of what the future will be.
    - lukifer 12y ago
      Corporations of sufficient size are indistinguishable from quasi-intelligent entities that merely utilize humans as processing nodes: http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2013/02/hostile-ai-youre-soaking-in-it.html http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2013/02/hostile-ai-youre-...
  - lostlogin 12y ago
    I know this isn't the point you were addressing, but according to the law in the US the corporation is sometimes a person. Everyone's favourite source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood In relation to other places, see The City of London. There is an incredible situation with corporations there where they get to vote as if they were a number of people (equal to employee numbers). It's surreal.
    - pjc50 12y ago
      The City of London has that arrangement because it's a district where vastly more people commute in than live there. It's a square mile almost entirely populated by offices. (Although it has "corporation" in the name it has nothing to do with limited liability companies as the usual meaning of "corporation". It's a local government that's a millenium old and predates both modern banking and company law.)
    - walshemj 12y ago
      But they city has no real political power its one of those old hangovers in the uk political system - like when university graduates got two vote's - which was only abolished after ww2
- QuantumChaos 12y ago
  In comparison, the police force has one goal: to serve and protect. Therefore their actions are always ethical and human-friendly.
  - innguest 12y ago
    As a fan of memorable and incisive rebuttals, I tip my hat to you. I'm saving this in my arsenal.
  - calibraxis 12y ago
    Police serve state interests, and protect their employer's (the state's) policies from the population. Anyway, it's just a propagandistic motto, like "Don't be Evil". We're discussing legal and structural constraints on corporations, that force them to care only about maximizing profit and marketshare. (Otherwise they fail, or get legal action, etc.) After all, corporations are artificial state creations too. With police, they're armed bureaucrats of the state which enforce policy on the population with violence. (And the threat thereof.) In that light, their actions are unsurprising.
akg_67 12y ago
IMO, any company that asks employees to work more than 40 hours a week and doesn't pay for those hours is doing 'wage theft'. Classifying employees as exempt seem to be a common method used by employers. It surprises me how often on HN startup employees claim to work 70-80 hours without any complaints. And, startup employers expect more hours without paying.
- Bahamut 12y ago
  I recently quit a startup since 60 hour weeks were expected. It made me do a hard self-evaluation and come to the conclusion that no job was worth that for me. 40 hours is an arbitrary number. I think whatever hours is fine, as long as both parties agree on it and are up front about it.
- greenyoda 12y ago
  In the U.S., the classification of exempt vs. non-exempt employees is specified by federal law, so companies can't just make that decision on their own. Unfortunately, software developers are legally exempted from having to be paid overtime: "More specifically, the special computer employee exemption applies to workers who apply systems analysis techniques and procedures to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications, or who design, develop, test or modify computer systems or programs based on user or design specifications."[1] However, if a startup (or any other company) has non-exempt employees such as clerical workers or cleaning staff, they must be paid overtime if they work over 40 hours a week. Of course, if a company wants to pay a software developer for overtime, they're free to do so. I've never heard of that being done, however. [1] http://www.flsa.com/computer.html http://www.flsa.com/computer.html See also: http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html
  - akg_67 12y ago
    There is a lot of leeway in exempt classification. Companies have lot of influence on law making process so I am not surprised that more jobs are considered exempt. Personally, I have seen exempt status being abused by companies. One technology company I worked for classified certain technical roles as exempt until the company merged with another company. I was not purview to the decision making or what led to reversing the decision, but during the merger process, these technical roles were reclassified as non-exempt. From http://www.trinet.com/resources/industry_articles/exempt_vs_nonexempt.htm http://www.trinet.com/resources/industry_articles/exempt_vs_... "In California, employees falling within the computer professionals exemption must be paid at least $39.90 per hour, which translates to a monthly salary of $6,927.75 and an annual salary of $83,132.93 (these figures typically increase every year)." Edit: A better reference - http://www.shrm.org/templatestools/hrqa/pages/californiaexemptionrequirements.aspx http://www.shrm.org/templatestools/hrqa/pages/californiaexem...
forkandwait 12y ago
When I worked in construction and restaurants, I saw people agree to work off the books (at the restaurants) and the construction companies would "bank" the overtime hours so they didn't have to pay time and a half, even though they were union companies. Scumbags both, plain and simple...
pan69 12y ago
My wife works in a hotel (housekeeping) and she tells me the same thing. Every week she has to go with great care through her payslip to check if she's been paid correctly. When they've made a mistake and we contact the hotels finance department it's like; "Oops, sorry." but my gut feeling is that they do this on purpose. Imagine, scamming thousands of employees per week on few hours here and there, must be quite a saving.
- calibraxis 12y ago
  Yes, the less power you have, the more it happens. I see it happen all the time. The more powerful the people, the less seriously they treat any debt they owe you. Of course, debts in the other direction (from the less-powerful to the more-powerful) are considered sacred. This is more universal than just the US, and than a specific point in time.
higherpurpose 12y ago
Certainly was with the Apple-Google deal, if we need a more relevant tech-related case.
doctorpangloss 12y ago
Other NYTimes coverage puts the obscenity of wage theft in much clearer terms: > One of the causes of this epidemic of wage theft — which, according to Mr. Lafer’s E.P.I. report, involves sums “far greater than the combined total stolen in all the bank robberies, gas station robberies, and convenience store robberies in the country” — is lax enforcement of the country’s wage and hour laws. In 1941, there was one federal inspector for every 11,000 workers. As of 2008, there was one for every 141,000 workers. “The average employer has just a 0.001 percent chance of being investigated in a given year,” Mr. Lafer estimates. Because there is so little risk of getting caught, one-third of all employers who have been found guilty of violating wage and hour laws continue to do it.[0] Hourly labor laws are ridiculous. And saying that 60 million workers hourly are harmed significantly understates how awful these laws are. > According to one multicity study, in a single week, nearly two-thirds of low-wage workers had, on average, 15 percent of their pay stolen by their employers. 60 million of today's workers will lose wealth that could compound into more wealth. Then there are the million or so new workers who will join the workforce at the end of the year. In four decades of poor enforcement, a hundred million people have been harmed, two-third of them losing 15% of their paychecks every week that could have compounded over those 40 years into meaningful life savings. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/the-republican-war-on-workers-rights/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/the-republic...
- hessenwolf 12y ago
  Currently working as a risk manager in a multi-mega-monster insurance company. We do a lot of analyses using the 99.5% value at risk, i.e., the value that there is only a .5% chance of exceeding. 0.001% is well into the range in which the risk would just be ignored.
x0x0 12y ago
I don't know what is wrong with the united states. This idea that somehow a subcontracting relationship should wash the outer shell company clean of the necessity to comply with the law is just offensive, and if widely accepted, it renders our laws nearly meaningless. Also, if you've never seen wage theft, you've never worked in fast food. It happened all the time to me and my friends in the suburbs.
Padding 12y ago
> This has spread to multiple industries across many sectors. It’s affected not just minimum-wage workers, but also middle-class workers. I have no idea how much of an issue this is and what the real-world implications for the individuals are, but if it has become a systematic phenomenon, then maybe it's worth rethinking the rules? If it really is as wide-spread as they say, then having everyone play by the book might result in a redistribution of large amounts of money, thus impacting inflation .. which I guess is hardly in anyone's interest.
- capisce 12y ago
  What do you propose? Making the rules say it's OK for employers to exploit their workers?
  - Padding 12y ago
    > What do you propose? For starters, rational discourse. I don't see much point in being cynical. If there is demand for those overtime hours and people willing to supply them .. and society as a whole is better off for it in the end, but our rules prohibit it, then clearly there's adequate reason to question the rules. We need to conduct research on how both alternatives - i.e. either enforcing the rules or changing them - would affect everyday life, and then, as a democratic society, let people make a deliberate decision as to which alternative they prefer.
    - fpgeek 12y ago
      Hold on there. Society has already made a judgement that those overtime hours only make society better off when an employer is willing to pay extra for them. Implicit in that is a judgment that neither employers nor employees properly account for the social cost of that overtime (because of short-run vs. long-run considerations, impacts on third parties like the employee's friends and family and so on). Making the case that the social costs have changed and revisiting that judgment democratically is one thing. Evading that judgment by trickery (especially when that can involve tricking the employee) is something very different - cheating the system by shifting the social costs of overtime where they do not belong.
colordrops 12y ago
I used to watch kung fu flicks where a town of workers wouldn't get their wages, then the bosses would stomp them down if they let out the slightest peep. Eventually some hero would show up to fight the bosses and eventually win back the worker's wages. I lived in China for nearly nine years, and saw wage theft on a regular basis. The working class is getting used and abused in the US, and I predicted several years ago that they would follow in China's footsteps. Looks like that time has arrived.
justifier 12y ago
i have an applicable anecdote: .. in terse i worked 120hrs in a week, was refused overtime by splitting my duties into three 40hr positions, did research, went to the DOJ, they sat on it for 9 months, then refused and threatened me, i sent the DOJ lawyer's secretary my research, she went over his head, and i got the pay due to me .. i lost a job in nyc, at the time of employment i was 'wearing many hats' which really just meant i was doing the work of three people: managing five properties, running a catering service, doing the accounting at four of the five properties; i was putting in 14-18 hour days 7 days a week, i was homeless and was just glad to have something to do instead of sleeping on the F line, also.. making money the way the payroll avoided paying me overtime was by splitting my check into these three different positions, by doing this i could work 90-120 hours a week, my 'personal best' was 123 but individually each of my personalities would be working less than 40 hours the firing was abrupt, ugly and full of calculated politics i was upset and wanted validation of my hard work so i went to the local library and looked up NYC wage laws i found out that forbidding this 'task splitting' tactic is baked right into the law so i knew i had a case for getting the overtime i felt i deserved, again, i was homeless so i spent countless hours in the stacks looking over legal decisions to find precedence i even covered potential roadblocks along the lines of 'we are unable to find his old timecards' from my former employer by investigating the law as it pertains to how long documents on employees must be kept by an employer confident in my case i went to the DOJ, they appointed me a lawyer, and he assured me he'd look into it 9 months later and i still have yet to hear anything, i was told it may take 30days to 6 months, and i had moved on emotionally at this point so i was giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, at 9 months i decided it was time to do my own follow up, lawyer is unable to remember me or my case and has to call me back in a week after he finds my old file, explains that he did an investigation consisting of interviewing the owner of the establishment who claimed he paid all overtime wages and interviewing random employees who all said they were paid what was owed them, his conclusion? i was a crazy person, he told me to stop calling and hung up on me i called back immediately, i asked if he had looked at my timecards, looked at payroll, looked at accounting logs, he said that kind of work is only necessary if other employees state concern as well, hung up on me again i called back and the phone rang for an hour before i gave up i called every day for three days, if he answered he'd hear my voice and immediately hang up on me i went down to the offices myself but he had gone home for the day, the next day when i called he threatened to have me arrested if i come to the office again and then hung up on me i called back but this time, instead of screaming i was welcomed by a friendly voice, she explained that she was the lawyer's secretary and asked what i did that was making him so upset everyday, i explained my situation and that i had a stack of documents: paystubs, timecards, precedence, verbose and organised personal logs; that expressly showed i was owed overtime she told me to come in after the lawyer went home for the day and show her this folder, i did the next day and she looked stunned at the work i put into it, she took my research to her boss's boss and three days later i got a check in the mail signed by my former employee the amount was for the exact value i had calculated in my logs, down to the penny .. the story ends there, but if you wonder why i was fired, read on: i was interviewing for a position to sell coffee at a major, yet private, cafe in manhattan, i got the job but in the course of working there for ten days i was promoted to a managerial position i was running the main cafe and its four satellites throughout the island, doing everything from organising shifts to organising private parties, i did daily accounting at the main hub, and the full books at all the satellites my quick promotions were the work of an employee whose job i was doing at the height of my employment, it was the holiday season and he wanted a three week vacation but was told he was too crucial to leave for so long, i was his plan out by putting me in his position, while still expecting me to do the other positions i was already working, he was able to take his vacation i am unsure what he thought would happen but when he came back i was kicking ass, and developing a rapport with the owner.. mind you, i had only been there ten days prior to taking the reigns so i was still very new to the company, when the old manager returned i was put into a 'positional limbo', the old manager led me on with promises of once he settled back in that i would run the satellites and he would only run the main hub, for three days i would come to work and do little things around the cafe and office that needed doing but everyone knew could go ignored, in those days the old manager had hired two new people into my catering job and my accounting position, again, with reassurances that i would get my managerial duties back running the satellites on the third day the owner came in and i greeted him and asked if he'd be interested in opening a cafe in london because at the time i was interested in relocating there myself, he said it was the first time he'd thought about it, and he'd need some time to think about it more, but that he would the next day i came into work and i was told i was fired, i asked why and the owner said the old manager 'no longer felt comfortable around me', i was stunned, just the day before we took our lunch break together.. this would be the last time i saw him, i told the owner this whole thing felt shitty, he apologised and explained the old manager had been there for five years and he had trust his opinion .. in case there are any lingering thoughts on whether i did make the old manager uncomfortable stead it being some weird conspiracy that he felt his position was threatened by my presence or some such: i ordered a book off amazon, interestingly O'Reilly's 'Learning Perl, 6th Edition', since i was homeless, and spent all my time there anyway, i had my packages sent to the cafe, the book had yet to have arrived before my termination so after being fired i would periodically stop by and stick my head in to see if the book had arrived, after about three weeks the owner went from being friendly to thinking i was some insane holder on, weaving lies about 'a book', so that i could 'have an excuse' to come to the cafe, now i was getting emails from amazon saying the package had been delivered, i told the owner and he became furious trying to explain to me that the package was some delusion of mine, i went to the post office that checked the package in, and they had a signature from someone who had recieved the package at the cafe, it was the old manager's signature i went back to the cafe and explained this and now the owner was threatening to call the police if i ever came back, i went back to the post office, explained the situation to them, they sent a representative, on his lunch break, the same day, and then called me later that day to tell me my package was waiting for me at the post office when i went to claim it i was told the guy who went to the cafe to get the package wanted to personally give it to me, he came out smiling and told me everything happened as i explained it: first the owner yelled at him about how i was a crazy former employee, then claimed the package was a figment of my imagination; but then the postal worker showed him the signature, the owner then tore the office apart looking for it and concluded something must be off, that maybe i already had the package and was lying about it, at that point the old manager came back from his lunch break and the postal worker explained the situation to him, he denied having it, then the postal worker started threatening him with legal repercussions because i was claiming i had yet to have received the package but the post office had the mangager's signature for it, then the old manager apparently walked over to his filing cabinet, pulled the bottom drawer all the way out and took my boxed book out of from the behind all of the files, i am unsure of his fate after that, the postal worker said he was happy to get out of there and just took the box and left i bought a plane ticket to london, two weeks in advance to avoid the price hike, and spent that two weeks up all night learning perl in Yaffa Cafe: bottomless coffee, open 24hrs, and free wifi
afafsd 12y ago
Yeah, I know how they feel. I worked in the US for several years and something like a tenth of my salary was stolen by something called "Social Security". Do I ever see any of that money again? Nope! Only if I work in the US for ten years do I have any hope of getting some money out of the Social Security system (if it's still going in its present form when I retire, which I doubt).
afafsd 12y ago
Before people get too worked up about this they should consider it from the other point of view. If you're going to get strict about getting paid for every hour you work, you'd better believe I, as your employer, am going to start getting strict about making sure you're really working for every minute of those hours. No goofing off, no idle chit-chat, just work. How many of us would be willing to be held up to this standard? I sure as hell wouldn't.
- watwut 12y ago
  First of all, low level low pay employees are held up that standard you cite. They do not get breaks and other similar perks. Second, I would much rather work 40 hours with very little chit-chat then mandatory 60 hours with 30 hours that time being wasted. I actually worked in such environment and liked it. I would note that it was team culture, not something enforced by a set of punishments.
mixmastamyk 12y ago
I'm left wondering how this missing overtime pay continue past the first short paycheck? I'd stop working overtime until it arrived.
- pjc50 12y ago
  So you'd be fired.
  - mixmastamyk 12y ago
    Unlikely that would be needed, but its a two-way contract, if either side doesn't meet their obligations, it can be canceled.
Sarahanderson 12y ago
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64 points by akg_67 12y ago

Disgusting, but not surprising. A corporation is a soulless entity with one goal: maximize profits. That doesn't produce ethical, human-friendly actions.

gress 12y ago
Not really - a corporation is a group of people. Sometimes those in control of it have no goal other than profit maximization, but by no means always.
- Absentinsomniac 12y ago
  Well, often if those running a corporation do not have profit maximization as their primary goal, they are voted out by investors. Essentially, maximizing profit becomes the job of the leaders as requested by those invested. There are some exceptions where corporations are profitable by targeting towards environmental things, or other causes, but the bottom line of profit is still there... Especially so with larger corporations.
  - wutbrodo 12y ago
    I suspect those downvoting gress don't understand what he's saying at all. His claim that "sometimes", thos ein charge aren't only thinking about profit maximization is excluding the case you're describing, where "those in charge" is some combination of investors and the actual execs (specifically, in your example, "those in charge" _are_ in favor of profit maximization). There are a fair few examples in tech where founders have managed to hold on to a disproportionate amount of control and can much more accurately said to be fully "in charge", and those are the cases gress is claiming exists.
    - gress 12y ago
      Thanks - that is part of what I'm saying. Also, as another point, 'profit maximization' is predicting the future, and there is a lot of room for different views of what the future will be.
  - lukifer 12y ago
    Corporations of sufficient size are indistinguishable from quasi-intelligent entities that merely utilize humans as processing nodes: http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2013/02/hostile-ai-youre-soaking-in-it.html http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2013/02/hostile-ai-youre-...
- lostlogin 12y ago
  I know this isn't the point you were addressing, but according to the law in the US the corporation is sometimes a person. Everyone's favourite source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood In relation to other places, see The City of London. There is an incredible situation with corporations there where they get to vote as if they were a number of people (equal to employee numbers). It's surreal.
  - pjc50 12y ago
    The City of London has that arrangement because it's a district where vastly more people commute in than live there. It's a square mile almost entirely populated by offices. (Although it has "corporation" in the name it has nothing to do with limited liability companies as the usual meaning of "corporation". It's a local government that's a millenium old and predates both modern banking and company law.)
  - walshemj 12y ago
    But they city has no real political power its one of those old hangovers in the uk political system - like when university graduates got two vote's - which was only abolished after ww2
QuantumChaos 12y ago
In comparison, the police force has one goal: to serve and protect. Therefore their actions are always ethical and human-friendly.
- innguest 12y ago
  As a fan of memorable and incisive rebuttals, I tip my hat to you. I'm saving this in my arsenal.
- calibraxis 12y ago
  Police serve state interests, and protect their employer's (the state's) policies from the population. Anyway, it's just a propagandistic motto, like "Don't be Evil". We're discussing legal and structural constraints on corporations, that force them to care only about maximizing profit and marketshare. (Otherwise they fail, or get legal action, etc.) After all, corporations are artificial state creations too. With police, they're armed bureaucrats of the state which enforce policy on the population with violence. (And the threat thereof.) In that light, their actions are unsurprising.

akg_67 12y ago

IMO, any company that asks employees to work more than 40 hours a week and doesn't pay for those hours is doing 'wage theft'. Classifying employees as exempt seem to be a common method used by employers. It surprises me how often on HN startup employees claim to work 70-80 hours without any complaints. And, startup employers expect more hours without paying.

Bahamut 12y ago
I recently quit a startup since 60 hour weeks were expected. It made me do a hard self-evaluation and come to the conclusion that no job was worth that for me. 40 hours is an arbitrary number. I think whatever hours is fine, as long as both parties agree on it and are up front about it.
greenyoda 12y ago
In the U.S., the classification of exempt vs. non-exempt employees is specified by federal law, so companies can't just make that decision on their own. Unfortunately, software developers are legally exempted from having to be paid overtime: "More specifically, the special computer employee exemption applies to workers who apply systems analysis techniques and procedures to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications, or who design, develop, test or modify computer systems or programs based on user or design specifications."[1] However, if a startup (or any other company) has non-exempt employees such as clerical workers or cleaning staff, they must be paid overtime if they work over 40 hours a week. Of course, if a company wants to pay a software developer for overtime, they're free to do so. I've never heard of that being done, however. [1] http://www.flsa.com/computer.html http://www.flsa.com/computer.html See also: http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html
- akg_67 12y ago
  There is a lot of leeway in exempt classification. Companies have lot of influence on law making process so I am not surprised that more jobs are considered exempt. Personally, I have seen exempt status being abused by companies. One technology company I worked for classified certain technical roles as exempt until the company merged with another company. I was not purview to the decision making or what led to reversing the decision, but during the merger process, these technical roles were reclassified as non-exempt. From http://www.trinet.com/resources/industry_articles/exempt_vs_nonexempt.htm http://www.trinet.com/resources/industry_articles/exempt_vs_... "In California, employees falling within the computer professionals exemption must be paid at least $39.90 per hour, which translates to a monthly salary of $6,927.75 and an annual salary of $83,132.93 (these figures typically increase every year)." Edit: A better reference - http://www.shrm.org/templatestools/hrqa/pages/californiaexemptionrequirements.aspx http://www.shrm.org/templatestools/hrqa/pages/californiaexem...

forkandwait 12y ago

When I worked in construction and restaurants, I saw people agree to work off the books (at the restaurants) and the construction companies would "bank" the overtime hours so they didn't have to pay time and a half, even though they were union companies. Scumbags both, plain and simple...

pan69 12y ago

My wife works in a hotel (housekeeping) and she tells me the same thing. Every week she has to go with great care through her payslip to check if she's been paid correctly. When they've made a mistake and we contact the hotels finance department it's like; "Oops, sorry." but my gut feeling is that they do this on purpose. Imagine, scamming thousands of employees per week on few hours here and there, must be quite a saving.

calibraxis 12y ago
Yes, the less power you have, the more it happens. I see it happen all the time. The more powerful the people, the less seriously they treat any debt they owe you. Of course, debts in the other direction (from the less-powerful to the more-powerful) are considered sacred. This is more universal than just the US, and than a specific point in time.

higherpurpose 12y ago

Certainly was with the Apple-Google deal, if we need a more relevant tech-related case.

doctorpangloss 12y ago

Other NYTimes coverage puts the obscenity of wage theft in much clearer terms: > One of the causes of this epidemic of wage theft — which, according to Mr. Lafer’s E.P.I. report, involves sums “far greater than the combined total stolen in all the bank robberies, gas station robberies, and convenience store robberies in the country” — is lax enforcement of the country’s wage and hour laws. In 1941, there was one federal inspector for every 11,000 workers. As of 2008, there was one for every 141,000 workers. “The average employer has just a 0.001 percent chance of being investigated in a given year,” Mr. Lafer estimates. Because there is so little risk of getting caught, one-third of all employers who have been found guilty of violating wage and hour laws continue to do it.[0] Hourly labor laws are ridiculous. And saying that 60 million workers hourly are harmed significantly understates how awful these laws are. > According to one multicity study, in a single week, nearly two-thirds of low-wage workers had, on average, 15 percent of their pay stolen by their employers. 60 million of today's workers will lose wealth that could compound into more wealth. Then there are the million or so new workers who will join the workforce at the end of the year. In four decades of poor enforcement, a hundred million people have been harmed, two-third of them losing 15% of their paychecks every week that could have compounded over those 40 years into meaningful life savings. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/the-republican-war-on-workers-rights/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/the-republic...

hessenwolf 12y ago
Currently working as a risk manager in a multi-mega-monster insurance company. We do a lot of analyses using the 99.5% value at risk, i.e., the value that there is only a .5% chance of exceeding. 0.001% is well into the range in which the risk would just be ignored.

x0x0 12y ago

I don't know what is wrong with the united states. This idea that somehow a subcontracting relationship should wash the outer shell company clean of the necessity to comply with the law is just offensive, and if widely accepted, it renders our laws nearly meaningless. Also, if you've never seen wage theft, you've never worked in fast food. It happened all the time to me and my friends in the suburbs.

Padding 12y ago

> This has spread to multiple industries across many sectors. It’s affected not just minimum-wage workers, but also middle-class workers. I have no idea how much of an issue this is and what the real-world implications for the individuals are, but if it has become a systematic phenomenon, then maybe it's worth rethinking the rules? If it really is as wide-spread as they say, then having everyone play by the book might result in a redistribution of large amounts of money, thus impacting inflation .. which I guess is hardly in anyone's interest.

capisce 12y ago
What do you propose? Making the rules say it's OK for employers to exploit their workers?
- Padding 12y ago
  > What do you propose? For starters, rational discourse. I don't see much point in being cynical. If there is demand for those overtime hours and people willing to supply them .. and society as a whole is better off for it in the end, but our rules prohibit it, then clearly there's adequate reason to question the rules. We need to conduct research on how both alternatives - i.e. either enforcing the rules or changing them - would affect everyday life, and then, as a democratic society, let people make a deliberate decision as to which alternative they prefer.
  - fpgeek 12y ago
    Hold on there. Society has already made a judgement that those overtime hours only make society better off when an employer is willing to pay extra for them. Implicit in that is a judgment that neither employers nor employees properly account for the social cost of that overtime (because of short-run vs. long-run considerations, impacts on third parties like the employee's friends and family and so on). Making the case that the social costs have changed and revisiting that judgment democratically is one thing. Evading that judgment by trickery (especially when that can involve tricking the employee) is something very different - cheating the system by shifting the social costs of overtime where they do not belong.

colordrops 12y ago

I used to watch kung fu flicks where a town of workers wouldn't get their wages, then the bosses would stomp them down if they let out the slightest peep. Eventually some hero would show up to fight the bosses and eventually win back the worker's wages. I lived in China for nearly nine years, and saw wage theft on a regular basis. The working class is getting used and abused in the US, and I predicted several years ago that they would follow in China's footsteps. Looks like that time has arrived.

justifier 12y ago

i have an applicable anecdote: .. in terse i worked 120hrs in a week, was refused overtime by splitting my duties into three 40hr positions, did research, went to the DOJ, they sat on it for 9 months, then refused and threatened me, i sent the DOJ lawyer's secretary my research, she went over his head, and i got the pay due to me .. i lost a job in nyc, at the time of employment i was 'wearing many hats' which really just meant i was doing the work of three people: managing five properties, running a catering service, doing the accounting at four of the five properties; i was putting in 14-18 hour days 7 days a week, i was homeless and was just glad to have something to do instead of sleeping on the F line, also.. making money the way the payroll avoided paying me overtime was by splitting my check into these three different positions, by doing this i could work 90-120 hours a week, my 'personal best' was 123 but individually each of my personalities would be working less than 40 hours the firing was abrupt, ugly and full of calculated politics i was upset and wanted validation of my hard work so i went to the local library and looked up NYC wage laws i found out that forbidding this 'task splitting' tactic is baked right into the law so i knew i had a case for getting the overtime i felt i deserved, again, i was homeless so i spent countless hours in the stacks looking over legal decisions to find precedence i even covered potential roadblocks along the lines of 'we are unable to find his old timecards' from my former employer by investigating the law as it pertains to how long documents on employees must be kept by an employer confident in my case i went to the DOJ, they appointed me a lawyer, and he assured me he'd look into it 9 months later and i still have yet to hear anything, i was told it may take 30days to 6 months, and i had moved on emotionally at this point so i was giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, at 9 months i decided it was time to do my own follow up, lawyer is unable to remember me or my case and has to call me back in a week after he finds my old file, explains that he did an investigation consisting of interviewing the owner of the establishment who claimed he paid all overtime wages and interviewing random employees who all said they were paid what was owed them, his conclusion? i was a crazy person, he told me to stop calling and hung up on me i called back immediately, i asked if he had looked at my timecards, looked at payroll, looked at accounting logs, he said that kind of work is only necessary if other employees state concern as well, hung up on me again i called back and the phone rang for an hour before i gave up i called every day for three days, if he answered he'd hear my voice and immediately hang up on me i went down to the offices myself but he had gone home for the day, the next day when i called he threatened to have me arrested if i come to the office again and then hung up on me i called back but this time, instead of screaming i was welcomed by a friendly voice, she explained that she was the lawyer's secretary and asked what i did that was making him so upset everyday, i explained my situation and that i had a stack of documents: paystubs, timecards, precedence, verbose and organised personal logs; that expressly showed i was owed overtime she told me to come in after the lawyer went home for the day and show her this folder, i did the next day and she looked stunned at the work i put into it, she took my research to her boss's boss and three days later i got a check in the mail signed by my former employee the amount was for the exact value i had calculated in my logs, down to the penny .. the story ends there, but if you wonder why i was fired, read on: i was interviewing for a position to sell coffee at a major, yet private, cafe in manhattan, i got the job but in the course of working there for ten days i was promoted to a managerial position i was running the main cafe and its four satellites throughout the island, doing everything from organising shifts to organising private parties, i did daily accounting at the main hub, and the full books at all the satellites my quick promotions were the work of an employee whose job i was doing at the height of my employment, it was the holiday season and he wanted a three week vacation but was told he was too crucial to leave for so long, i was his plan out by putting me in his position, while still expecting me to do the other positions i was already working, he was able to take his vacation i am unsure what he thought would happen but when he came back i was kicking ass, and developing a rapport with the owner.. mind you, i had only been there ten days prior to taking the reigns so i was still very new to the company, when the old manager returned i was put into a 'positional limbo', the old manager led me on with promises of once he settled back in that i would run the satellites and he would only run the main hub, for three days i would come to work and do little things around the cafe and office that needed doing but everyone knew could go ignored, in those days the old manager had hired two new people into my catering job and my accounting position, again, with reassurances that i would get my managerial duties back running the satellites on the third day the owner came in and i greeted him and asked if he'd be interested in opening a cafe in london because at the time i was interested in relocating there myself, he said it was the first time he'd thought about it, and he'd need some time to think about it more, but that he would the next day i came into work and i was told i was fired, i asked why and the owner said the old manager 'no longer felt comfortable around me', i was stunned, just the day before we took our lunch break together.. this would be the last time i saw him, i told the owner this whole thing felt shitty, he apologised and explained the old manager had been there for five years and he had trust his opinion .. in case there are any lingering thoughts on whether i did make the old manager uncomfortable stead it being some weird conspiracy that he felt his position was threatened by my presence or some such: i ordered a book off amazon, interestingly O'Reilly's 'Learning Perl, 6th Edition', since i was homeless, and spent all my time there anyway, i had my packages sent to the cafe, the book had yet to have arrived before my termination so after being fired i would periodically stop by and stick my head in to see if the book had arrived, after about three weeks the owner went from being friendly to thinking i was some insane holder on, weaving lies about 'a book', so that i could 'have an excuse' to come to the cafe, now i was getting emails from amazon saying the package had been delivered, i told the owner and he became furious trying to explain to me that the package was some delusion of mine, i went to the post office that checked the package in, and they had a signature from someone who had recieved the package at the cafe, it was the old manager's signature i went back to the cafe and explained this and now the owner was threatening to call the police if i ever came back, i went back to the post office, explained the situation to them, they sent a representative, on his lunch break, the same day, and then called me later that day to tell me my package was waiting for me at the post office when i went to claim it i was told the guy who went to the cafe to get the package wanted to personally give it to me, he came out smiling and told me everything happened as i explained it: first the owner yelled at him about how i was a crazy former employee, then claimed the package was a figment of my imagination; but then the postal worker showed him the signature, the owner then tore the office apart looking for it and concluded something must be off, that maybe i already had the package and was lying about it, at that point the old manager came back from his lunch break and the postal worker explained the situation to him, he denied having it, then the postal worker started threatening him with legal repercussions because i was claiming i had yet to have received the package but the post office had the mangager's signature for it, then the old manager apparently walked over to his filing cabinet, pulled the bottom drawer all the way out and took my boxed book out of from the behind all of the files, i am unsure of his fate after that, the postal worker said he was happy to get out of there and just took the box and left i bought a plane ticket to london, two weeks in advance to avoid the price hike, and spent that two weeks up all night learning perl in Yaffa Cafe: bottomless coffee, open 24hrs, and free wifi

afafsd 12y ago

Yeah, I know how they feel. I worked in the US for several years and something like a tenth of my salary was stolen by something called "Social Security". Do I ever see any of that money again? Nope! Only if I work in the US for ten years do I have any hope of getting some money out of the Social Security system (if it's still going in its present form when I retire, which I doubt).

afafsd 12y ago

Before people get too worked up about this they should consider it from the other point of view. If you're going to get strict about getting paid for every hour you work, you'd better believe I, as your employer, am going to start getting strict about making sure you're really working for every minute of those hours. No goofing off, no idle chit-chat, just work. How many of us would be willing to be held up to this standard? I sure as hell wouldn't.

watwut 12y ago
First of all, low level low pay employees are held up that standard you cite. They do not get breaks and other similar perks. Second, I would much rather work 40 hours with very little chit-chat then mandatory 60 hours with 30 hours that time being wasted. I actually worked in such environment and liked it. I would note that it was team culture, not something enforced by a set of punishments.

mixmastamyk 12y ago

I'm left wondering how this missing overtime pay continue past the first short paycheck? I'd stop working overtime until it arrived.

pjc50 12y ago
So you'd be fired.
- mixmastamyk 12y ago
  Unlikely that would be needed, but its a two-way contract, if either side doesn't meet their obligations, it can be canceled.

Sarahanderson 12y ago

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