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. Laf

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...