How employers steal from workers and get away with it

[Music]

when you work

you expect to be paid for it you don’t

expect to be paid

less than you were promised or worse

nothing at all

but that’s exactly what’s happening to

millions of americans who work in a

range of industries

it’s especially a problem in agriculture

construction

restaurants garment factories poultry

plants

nursing homes in day labor and among

independent contractors

it’s called wage theft and chances are

that you or someone you know has

experienced it

wage theft occurs when individuals do

not receive their legally owed

wages and benefits wage theft can take

many forms

paying below the minimum wage

withholding earned benefits

overtime breaks or tips misclassifying

employees as independent contractors

and even outright non-payment the

economic policy institute

estimates that workers are losing 50

billion dollars a year to wage theft

but most people haven’t even heard of

the problem if it’s hard to picture 50

billion dollars

consider this yearly economic losses to

auto theft

robbery and burglary combined come to

much less

at 14 billion a year wage theft impacts

more than just the workers who don’t get

their wages

it lowers wages in those workplaces and

across entire industries

plus it robs communities of tax dollars

and even more broadly

it rewards cheating undermines

competition

and creates a race to the bottom that

hurts us all

although wage theft impacts many

industries my research focuses on one of

the most vulnerable sectors

day laborers most of whom are immigrants

from latin america

who seek daily work for cash you may

have seen day laborers

at a worker center outside a home

improvement store or on a street corner

on a typical morning at a street corner

hiring site trucks screech to a halt and

employers yell out

how many workers they need in the pay

rate and workers rush to the passenger

side window

day laborers may just have a couple

minutes to negotiate their wages

hours and working conditions all in

competition with other workers

and frequently with limited english

proficiency this rapid pace

of the hiring process unstable work

lack of immigration status and working

in one of the least regulated sectors of

the economy

makes day laborers particularly

vulnerable to wage theft

as well as other forms of exploitation

harassment

and victimization since 2015

my research has focused on immigrant day

laborers experiences with wage theft in

colorado

i’ve also trained trained teams of

graduate students as field workers

and taking them out to street corners

and denver’s worker center el centro

in total we interviewed 170 day laborers

and conducted a follow-up survey

of over 400 day labor bernal

story demonstrates how wage stuff

happens

bernal was recruited at a street corner

hiring site in denver colorado by an

employer

who then drove him 70 miles away for a

construction project

bernal worked from nine in the morning

until late at night

when the work was completed his employer

didn’t pay him what’s more

he stranded him in the parking lot over

an hour from home

the employer told him tomorrow i’ll come

back and pay you i didn’t bring any

money

when bernal insisted on being paid the

employer relented and gave him a check

but when bernal went to cash that check

it had no funds

so then he was stuck with a bounce check

fee on top of his unpaid wages

bernal’s story shows in many ways

employers try to cheat workers out of

their wages

they strand them far from home they

promise to pay later

they claim they don’t have the money to

pay or they issue checks with

insufficient funds

employers often say that wage theft is

an accident

but day labor’s experiences show how can

get patterns and intentional practice

to benefit at workers expense sadly

bernal’s story is not unique my survey

results found that 62 percent of day

laborers had experienced wage theft

and 19 just in the six months prior to

being surveyed

when day laborers try to confront

employers for their unpaid wages

they may stop answering the phone change

their numbers

or even threaten the worker because day

laborers work informally and off the

books

some employers they claim to have never

hired the worker at all

some employers vaguely or even directly

threaten to call immigration when

workers speak up or complain

this is illegal but employers get away

with it anyway

that’s because retaliation protections

are weak and immigrant day laborers

don’t tend to come forward

because they don’t trust the system to

protect them

u.s wage and hour laws require employers

to pay wages for all work completed

regardless of legal status

otherwise there’s a perverse incentive

to cheat

however the labor rights enforcement

system is under resource

and largely depends on individuals to

come to it to pursue cases

that’s a big ass for anyone and

especially for vulnerable populations

like day laborers not only does it take

a good amount of legal knowledge to even

know where to begin but there’s also a

steep opportunity cost

day laborers worry about spending days

weeks months even years

chasing unpaid wages when they could

just be out working the next job

they also worry about retaliation that’s

why many workers never file or give up

their claims

as many workers said they don’t want to

go around fighting

so wage theft continues because

employers know they’re likely to get

away with that

that doesn’t mean that day laborers do

nothing to prevent wage theft

or try to upgrade their working

conditions at street corners day

laborers try to organize a wage

floor to prevent undercutting and warn

workers of employers with bad

reputations when they walk by

for example they shout this one doesn’t

pay to blacklist employers

who’ve mistreated workers in the past

other strategies include

only accepting cash not checks and

insisting on getting paid

every day rather than waiting for

employers who promise to pay

at the end of the week or even

bi-monthly

still day labor is recognized that due

to lack of work

an employer’s relative power over them

that there’s no

guarantee only half of day laborers

who’d experience wage theft

did anything to recover their unpaid

wages including even asking their

employer for the money they owed them

just a third took the additional step of

seeking assistance from others

as many workers told me and student

researchers researchers

there’s nothing you can do every year

when i collaborate with students on this

project

some students tell me that they realize

that they too

have experienced wage theft they’re in

quite different positions in immigrant

day laborers

but also work in industries that are

prone to wage theft such as

child care restaurants bars and

low paid and non-paid internships in

fact

half a million coloradans suffer wage

theft every year

the nature of work is changing we’ve

seen it in the rise of freelancing

independent contracting

piece rate and part-time work and

contingent work

not only has there been a resurgence of

day labor but more jobs look

increasingly a lot like day labor even

if that’s not what we would call them

of course there’s a lot of flexibility

and competitiveness that comes from

these new kinds of jobs

but there also can be risks when they’re

also

increasingly characterized by low pay

no benefits job insecurity lack of

employer responsibility

and are primed for labor violations like

wage theft

they may be further prone to labor

practices that are quite harmful and

humiliating

but perfectly legal u.s labor laws are

still

based on relatively traditional

definitions and relationships between

employers

and their employees work arrangements

that increasingly carve workers out of

employees status not only lessen

employers responsibilities

but make it all the more challenging to

hold them accountable

for labor violations as well as unsafe

working conditions

wage that’s not exceptional it’s just

one more way we’ve undermined workers in

the name of profit and flexibility

it’s critical to update labor rights

enforcement to better evolve towards a

changing nature of work

but that’s not enough we also need to

rethink

and upgrade employment so that people’s

work

can actually support their lives and

when we look for contractors to remodel

our homes

look for child care or eat out in

restaurants

we need to ask more questions not just

about the quality of a job or a service

or even where the ingredients in our

food come from but also attune to how

workers are being paid

and being treated when we see rapid

construction growth in our cities

we see signs of development enough

progress but we should also ask

for whom and at what cost

the insecurity and risk of day labor

should worry all of us

about the future of work unless

we transform our approach to whose lives

and labor matter thank you

you