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