Wage Theft is a Bigger Problem Than Other Forms of Theft (2014)
epi.org
epi.org
Many people complain about the fact that Google has a record of where you go if you opt in to location tracking, but people should be able to extract this record to get an automated working time estimate without needing to do do anything to prepare ahead of time, if they have an Android phone and haven't disabled the tracking.
I'm not sure about the completeness/time accuracy of the logged data, but maybe you could weigh in on the presumed legal validity of such an approach?
It's entirely possible that is less accurate for others, but it's a source of data that many people in this situation should already have, so you can use it for those for whom it is more accurate, and ignore it for others.
However, it is geared towards protecting the employer from wage theft by employees in the form of late clock-in, early clock-out, etc. Eg, when an employee inflates their time worked.
if time-tracking somehow solves the bare moneys/hour problem, other, perhaps worse, conditions could surface (thinking of what it's like to work in an online shop warehouse here, in particular, where time-tracking is .. not a complete "solution.")
traditionally, afaik, unionization is the way out of situations where a great number of workers are disadvantaged by some policy set by a few people in the industry.
this is a social [(science)?] problem, not a technological one.
The reason we are so hard on violent criminals isn't because they stole a small amount of money or property, it's because of the violence part. We place a lot of value on human life and safety, and when there's a notable probability of someone being stabbed or shot, things get significantly worse.
Wage theft may result in some bad problems as well, but I can't imagine it leads to more people being stabbed or shot.
Would I rather a corporation steal $12,000 from me every year, or a burglar break into my home and steal my shit? I know I wouldn't pay $12,000 for a security system for my house.
It’s only a crime if it occurs on the street level anything above that and it’s called politics.
Well, I think you're just defining theft differently than the parent. In most people's minds (I think), when you talk about theft, you're talking about something with at least implied violence. This is exactly why non-violent (and semi-victimless) crimes like white collar crimes, pirating software, etc, tend to have lighter sentences and generally be looked at differently. This forum in particular is a place where people often make the case that software piracy shouldn't even be called piracy/theft, partially for this reason!
> I would argue that wage theft is a bigger problem in the sense that the scope is so much larger.
Valid, but I think you're just defining "bigger" here differently than parent. It seems like you're talking pure scope of people affected, whereas parent is including how severely the people are affected. I don't think that's a very interesting discussion to be honest - it's just defining words. I imagine both of you will agree with the statement "one impacts more people, but the other impacts people more severely, ideally we should try to combat both", no?
> Would I rather a corporation steal $12,000 from me every year, or a burglar break into my home and steal my shit? I know I wouldn't pay $12,000 for a security system for my house.
Yes, but, with every time someone breaks into your house there's a chance you might be hurt or killed... doesn't that change your calculus here? (Of course the actual numbers matter though!)
Don't try to hide behind "it isn't violence". Everything is violence if you think hard enough. We just prune down the scope to what happens to be convenient at the time.
The real qualifier for what makes this "theft" is the asymmetry of value generated for the payer vs. the reward returned to the payee.
Think about if that janitor WEREN'T there. She just stayed home and hardened somehow. No more floor\workspace cleaning, no more trash being emptied, no more bathrooms being restocked, no more Windows being cleaned.
I'd like to see 90% of businesses that hire janitors workplace productivity after not having them around.
Now look at programmers. System's I develop transact billions of times a quarter, generating millions in revenue.
Suppose all of the people capable of developing those services refused to work as well? Things would go along fine for the most part. Millions would still roll in.
So, yeah. It's theft. In BOTH cases. We just like to draw lines between skilled and unskilled labor and say "this person is more valuable than that person".
It's why the phrase "Human Resources" became a thing. It isn't about doing business in good faith with someone else. It's about stroking egos and making the financials look good.
I don't know the solution, but when most normal people I know make 4 times less than the average programmer for an equal investment of their lives to someone else's ends, there is some stinking problem going on, and it isn't just "the market at work". That's a part undoubtedly, but there seems to be something structural underlying it all as well. There is no reason why wage growth should not have scaled with capacity to generate revenue.
Yes, very much this. "Violent" crimes clearly have a more evident immediate danger, but all theft is violence (though the scope might not be immediately evident).
This applies especially so toward individuals who are already low-income. Steal a low-income person's wages, and they fall deeper into the pit of poverty. They can't make their rent payment, their electric bill, they overdraw their account maybe. They haven't just had an hour or two stolen from them.
it's not because of the violence itself, it's because of the visibility of this particular form of violence and the resulting news coverage.
There are plenty of forms of violence present in our societies that we do not give its due attention, domestic violence for example which, the recent two or three decades aside, was even tolerated.
Same goes for wage theft, we don't pay attention because the people being robbed rarely have a voice. No cameraman drives to a home to interview someone who was the victim of wage theft, as it doesn't make for a very exciting visual evening cable news headline.
It's true, and sad that this principle hasn't been, and often still isn't applied fairly when it comes to domestic violence, violence against minorities and wealthy rapists, but failures to apply a principle fairly do not invalidate it entirely.
You're right, but this doesn't prove your main point. The fact that some things are more looked at than others doesn't mean that violence in general is not a dividing line.
This is something of an absurd stance in a country with high-cost, private insurance like the US. People go without treatment, and sometimes die, out of fear of the associated cost. But somehow stealing money from them doesn't cause them bodily harm? Especially when a vast majority of this wage theft is being done to workers without employer provided health insurance?
We have laws against violent activities just the same as we have laws against theft. We don't need to stop violence indirectly by policing activities associated with it.
If it's only by blurring the lines between theft and violence that we can defend the focus on property theft over wage theft, that strikes me as implicit agreement with the basic argument made by the article.
Society may have a bigger problem with violent theft than with employers stealing wages, but that society views it this way in itself is a problem.
> Society may have a bigger problem with violent theft than with employers stealing wages, but that society views it this way in itself is a problem.
I'm with parent on this though, personally. I'd much rather more people lost some money than more people were physically hurt/killed. There are scope effects here - I wouldn't necessarily trade 1 armed robbery for 1,000 thefts or something. But I do think the OP is making a false equivalence which isn't really useful to the discussino.
Ahh but no one has to get hurt, it's about intimidation. One robber uses a gun to intimidate the victim with the threat that they will feel pain or lose their actual life if they stand up.
The other type of robber uses employment to intimidate the victim with the threat that they will lose their livelihood if they stand up.
> There are scope effects here - I wouldn't necessarily trade 1 armed robbery for 1,000 thefts or something.
I think that's a fair qualifier.
It's a bigger economic problem by at least an order of magnitude according to an article published on a website focusing on economic issues.
How?
Thru research, publishing, and spelling out an analogy to help (most reasonable) people understand the scope?
Kinda like Meixell & Eisenbury's the OP linked to?
"...I can't imagine it leads to more people being stabbed or shot."
Non sequitur.
Did you have a point? Or are you just concern trolling?
I joined a dev team on March 8th.
By March 21st, I learned that nobody has been paid in 2 months.
Around that same day, the CEO went to jail for writing bad checks.
All other employees quit that same day.
I stayed on after CEO got out-- hoping the client who has been supposed to pay would pay. I was also offered 20k raise + moved to President of Software Development. I was hoping I could temper the CEO's risk factors and keep the business going and maybe get a paycheck, and help get the people who quit paid as well for their previous work.
I worked feverishly 100+hours per week to deliver updates... (keeping some of the IP on my own box --it only modified data, I'd run it locally then just export the data to mysql.)
I've still not been paid, I've filed wage claims, and still nothing.
I've since told the CEO and client, until I get paid nothing else happens.
Has any other developer experienced anything like this? It's so frustrating especially since I'm about to be homeless as a result... I'm owed like nearly 20k in back pay.
I used to do SEO before becoming a dev full-time in 2012, I can make it so no other developer ever works for this guy again.
My hope while it'll feel good to get revenge, is that I truly save other devs from going through this...it's one of the most horrible things I've ever experienced professionally.
I would contact an employment lawyer so that you'll get your 2+ months of pay, turn in all company materials and data, and leave on Monday morning.
Yeah... little rant here... I recently got back from a year-long contract in Sydney.
Australia is one of the most labor-friendly places on the planet. So if this sort of crap can happen there, it can happen anywhere.
Recently settled and signed NDA... but I feel relatively anonymous on here.
Anyway first... they made me an offer letter, and I resigned from the old job. About a week later -- they knew I had given notice at the old job -- they came back to me and said, "Yeah, we thought our budget was X, but now it's 80% X. Take it or leave it." I was annoyed, but I took it.
Christmas came, they were giving out bonuses. Even though I was counted as a full-time employee, I didn't get a bonus like all the other non-immigrant workers. We found out that every Australian citizen or permanent resident got a bonus, but none of the Americans did. Shortly after complaining, HR sent a letter out to everyone saying that talking about pay or bonuses was a fireable offense.
I stepped up to cover a few holidays, and worked over the Christmas break. But they had automatically taken 2 weeks off of my vacation pool... it took about 4 months to get it sorted, I eventually did get the time back -- but only after I pulled time sheet records (something most employees couldn't do) to show I was working.
My final expense report never got paid.
They had my start date off by about a week. They had my end date off by 3 days.
Long story short, I ended up taking them to the Fair Work Commission (sort of like Small Claims Court). It was not an easy decision to do this. My network in Australia isn't huge, and I can't control the story they will tell inside the company, or to future employers who want to call and verify work / references. Clearly I can control who I list as references, but... far too much damage can be done when someone looks up connections on LinkedIn, and asks one of the shady folks, "Hey, what did you think of him?" I won’t get a chance to tell my side of it, I just don’t get the job.
So I won my claim (or at least got them to make me an offer that I settled for -- about 50% of what I was actually due), and helped a handful of other people win their claims... but I'm quite certain I alienated my manager and MD and everyone on the HR team in the process. It's expensive to stand up for yourself. Time to fight it, cost of a lawyer, and cost to the network... not hard to see why so many people don't fight it. A few grand... meh, I probably would have written it off if they paid any portion time, expense reports, or bonuses that they should have paid me.
Mind you this wasn't some Podunk 10-person agency... it was an agency with over 2,000 global employees. And I wasn't some day-rate worker, I was director-level and they tasked me with running some of their biggest projects for some of their highest profile clients.
The thing is, you'll never know what people say behind your back, or who they talk to... or if they honor your request not to talk to past employers. Only option would be to remove all traces from that company from your references / LinkedIn... and then what do you do about the gap year(s)?
There's also the bad reputation that can be spread around the golf course meetings. It's quite a small city.
Company is in Australia? Forget the NDA, name and shame so someone else on this board doesn't get robbed like you.
It has not happened to me, because I would have quit after even a single missing paycheck -- the job market for software developers is just too good for anyone to be willing to put up with this kind of abuse.
I really hope you are looking for another job rather than staying where you are and hoping to get a paycheck. And I also really hope you are talking to a qualified lawyer about this.
i'm also not wanting to relocate (I'm in Utah).
Someone that doesn't pay you doesn't deserve professional respect or ultimatums.
Don't steal IP, or help keep lights on. Just. Walk. Away.
However, many victims are trapped, and that raises the bar considerably.
I may not be able to change their business practices, but I can make it so they lose more money than they owe me through lost business deals with other people. I can also make it much harder for them to hire developers in the future.
Telling the relevant state authorities that the company broke the law is fine. Getting a lawyer and suing the company for your lost wages is fine. But shaming the company or the CEO publicly could land you in a world of legal trouble.
On top of that, publicly shaming your previous employer could make you less attractive as a job candidate. A lot of companies would not want to hire somebody who does that, because they think that person might do it to them -- and they might think that way even if they believe you are telling the truth and they have no plans to screw you over.
Organizing doesn't mean forming an official legal union, or joining an already established union (in some cases this might make sense but not always). You can organize mutual aid networks that do things like share salary data and talk about their problems.
I pay a monthly fee of 15€/month, have access to a labor lawyer and a "resistance box" in case I have to go on strike or something, they match a % of your salary (not remember how much, but in my case it was like 80% of it). They also have a sensible approach on collective agreements.
I also have access to more stuff I can't remember now.
Sadly this trade union is small, and sectorial, but it very refreshing seen this, because most trade unions in Spain have bad rep.
i know a couple people selling 'legalshield', and a few people that have bought it. having the ability to contact an attorney for 'now and then' questions, to clear stuff up, or write letters.... $30/month or something like that. Seems similar, and potentially valuable, to have that in a corporate setting, depending on how much $ it would actually run you.
> LinkedIn failed to record, account and pay for all hours worked in a workweek, investigators found ... "Off the clock' hours are all too common for the American worker. This practice harms workers, denies them the wages they have rightfully earned and takes away time with families," said Susana Blanco, district director for the division in San Francisco. "We urge all employers, large and small, to review their pay practices to ensure employees know their basic workplace rights and that the commitment to compliance works through all levels of the organization. The department is committed to protecting the rights of workers and leveling the playing field for all law-abiding employers."
Other ways separates the money from the labor. There will always be strife in that organization. Having a worker owned co-op also means that the profits don't go elsewhere - they go back to the people doing the labor.
I don't read Italian, but there are a set of unemployment laws in Italy that roughly state - if there are 10 unemployed people who have an idea for a company, they can request all their unemployment insurance collectively and form a worker cooperative. Right now, there's more than 8000 such cooperatives in Italy.
In Norway, Kantega is another such example. They're considered in the top 100 best workplaces in Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantega
Suma, a food collective, is another such example. Again, note the humane treatment of workers. Again, this is democracy in the workplace - the workers collectively decide how they are to be treated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suma_(co-operative)
Prof. Wolff had a dissertation he gave, which is on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1WUKahMm1s
> Windings Inc. is headquartered in New Ulm, Minnesota, with domestic and international production facilities and capabilities. Windings maintains the highest standards in manufacturing, engineering, material management and concept development while achieving a global presence in the industry.
> Our company was founded in 1965. The majority of our business is made up of the Industrial, Aerospace, and Defense markets.
...
> In 1998, Windings Inc. formed an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) for a planned purchase and transition of Company stock to the employees of Windings. The higher sense of responsibility that comes with employee ownership has made Windings even more responsive to customer needs and encourages innovation to bring greater value to its customers. In 2008, the company became 100% employee-owned.
I think it's both. My best friend makes $31 / hour installing plastic car door clips on an assembly line. That's a ridiculous wage for what he does (literally anyone could do his job.)
I'm happy for him and his family, but there's also a negative aspect to labor costing 3-4x what would be competitive in an open market.
Id consider such arguments if they applied to CEO's or similarly were reducing corporate expenses on things of questionable value. I find most of the companies that aay they can't pay workers overpay upper management and have a lot of frivilous spending.
A friend recently rented out an apartment in central London to people working for a nonprofit org at £10k per month and this is only scratching the surface of ludicrous corporate expense culture. Meanwhile these upper management say they can't pay their staff a living wage...
I really don't buy the argument that normal workers deserve to be paid crap because of "free market", but for some reason executive compensation needs to be amazingly outlandish.
No argument from me; I think it's absurd at both ends. If I had to keep one I would absolutely keep paying my friend ~60k / year.
What a generalization. Nevermind the thousands of small businesses operating on razor thin margins. They wouldn't be negatively affected by $60k minimum wage in the least bit.
$60k is way beyond the minimum in most of the US. It’s a good living even in major cities like Atlanta. Also, paying $60k to all 125 million full time workers would basically eat up all US wage income. The income range would have to be $60-70k.
In the sake of full disclosure, what year did you graduate college?
https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/05/01/this-is-the-no-1-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/upshot/lost-jobs-houses-s...
I make around that and without health insurance my chronic illness would be a disaster financially. Fortunately with decent insurance it’s just a disaster physically and emotionally.
My friend lives in Loves Park IL, near where I (we) grew up. You're delierious if you think it costs even 60k (120k since most families have two earners) to live there. Go experience the rest of the country some time.
How do I know what is the case? The fact that anyone with functioning limbs could do his job? That comes from him and the job description he gave me.
> And it's pretty clear the company is making enough money to cover it
Yeah I think you forgot about those factories which don't reside in the US.
There are lots of jobs like that where people are paid lots of money. I'm not buying your argument. Hell, most CEOs do a completely awful job, and still get to command much, much higher salaries. If you want to complain about people being overpaid, start with the executives.
This is a very interesting take and I'm exactly the same way. In fact, I just gave notice last week at my current position so that I could pursue a position with a company that was leaner and where more of my time would be spent on relevant work versus meta work. Fortunately, the complete compensation packages, benefits, insurance, et al. at both places came out to about a wash. My current employer is more secure from an employment perspective but I'm willing to give that up in exchange for "staying in the game" technically and for seeing the fruits of my labor have a more direct impact in the marketplace.
You really really can work at a better place.
I accept that unions have had a valuable place in society, and they're definitely still good for some things, but I don't believe their poor reputation today is "corporate propaganda". They seem to be one of those types of organizations that have outlived their original purpose, mostly, and now exist to propagate themselves.
Ultimately, it's just another power structure. The structure is neither good nor bad. What matters is the people. ("The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery.") Like every organization, over time they tend to collect the type of people who take advantage of that power structure.
Collective bargaining is a life sentence of mediocrity for both a company and individuals. However, for 19th and 20th style assembly line type work where workers are literally interchangeable, then I can understand the appeal of collective bargaining. Some guy turning the same screw all day on an assembly line — there is not much room for “excelling” — you either turn the screw when the next part gets to you, or you don’t. Screw-turning doesn’t really have much opportunity for innovation or extra-mile at the individual level. But for a restaurant worker who might be extra nice to a customer or stay a few minutes late to help make the place extra clean or the kitchen worker who reduces food waste by being more efficient — even those “low” level jobs would be harmed by collective bargaining. Jobs that benefit from collective bargaining are ones with extremely minimal autonomy or require an extremely low skill set: just turn a screw. For jobs that actually require intelligence (emotional or intellectual,) collective bargaining is an insult. Unless of course you are poorly motivated in which case it’s a gift.
How do you reconcile this opinion with the high-levels of pay and celebrity in the entertainment industry and professional sports? They're all unionized and their bosses make money hand over fist as well.
It may even describe what is an inevitable outcome, but, absent compelling evidence, even that is merely conjecture.
Otherwise, there's nothing inherent to collective bargaining that requires any of the features you mentioned. Even "collective" doesn't have to mean collectivism in the socialism/communism sense.
> assembly line type work where workers are literally interchangeable
Anecdotally, I've read the observation (perhaps even complaint) here on HN that employers still have a tendency to prefer their workers be more interchangeable than intelligent or individually productive.
Even if this attitude is minority, but a large minority, it creates an environment where unions seem desireable.
There's a fantastic This American Life that I've recommended here before: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
It's on the NUMMI plant. GM's worst plant was shut down; Toyota took it over as part of a joint venture to show GM how to make cars in the Toyota way. The story of the workers and how they change as they work for an employer that treats them with respect is amazing.
It definitely made me believe that unions indeed could be shitty. But also, that it's not a one-sided thing, and that other relationships are not just possible, but necessary if we're going to make things that are more useful and reliable than a '79 Chevette.
But add a chronic health issue or having to take care of a dependant and you'll quickly find out why that job security + decent instead of maximum wage is not such a bad idea.
If we eliminated those agreements and exposed companies to increased litigation risk, what would you expect to happen to wages? They’d go down naturally.
Let’s pretend companies were bound by French style agreements — wages would quickly drop to French-style wages. American workers have more disposable income that almost every other country. If you want to reduce that disposable income, start allowing class actions.
Mind you, employees DO have protection against wage “theft” — that’s already a crime. A simple google search will return dozens of law firms ready to represent a worker who thinks they’ve been wronged. Even arbitration agreements can’t protect against illegal activity.
The only people getting paid for class actions are attorneys. The worker doesn’t win anything but maybe a $25 check. Meanwhile their employer has to incur extraordinary expenses. Who pays for that? The workers through lower salaries and customers through higher prices.
Minimum wage Workers do not have the time or resources to hire a Lawyer to chase down $100 in withheld overtime.
When theft has occurred at a mass scale, such as Amazon Warehouse Workers or UPS Employees... it is far less expensive for the Employer to settle the matter with one collective unit, rather than thousands of individuals.
Yes, the Lawyers reap the majority of the benefits, but the judgement takes that penalty into account.
Class Action with regards to wage suits is very rare and this was mainly a push by plaintiff attorneys who stood to rake in millions while offering no guarantee of providing a substantive reward for the plaintive.
In the end as stated by some the reasoning, the two laws are written as such that binding agreements are truly that, binding. If that needs to change then Congress needs to act.
In reality, it's almost guaranteed to be favorable to the employer, because they're the ones paying for the arbiter.
"Class Action with regards to wage suits is very rare and this was mainly a push by plaintiff attorneys who stood to rake in millions while offering no guarantee of providing a substantive reward for the plaintive."
Other than a change of behavior of the company, which would stop this from happening. Although you've not mentioned what you base your position on.
"In the end as stated by some the reasoning, the two laws are written as such that binding agreements are truly that, binding. If that needs to change then Congress needs to act."
That's already law. But what's happening is that employers are abusing their power over the employees, and basically saying, "I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it further." And most employees do not have the resources or knowledge to be able to enforce the original agreement.
The fact that they can't represents a major political failure. Good policies can make a huge difference.
Here in the UK, the HMRC (our tax authority) is responsible for enforcing the National Minimum Wage. This makes a great deal of sense. Employers are legally required to report wage payments to HMRC for payroll tax purposes and the HMRC have tremendous institutional capacity for conducting financial investigations. For HMRC, a minimum wage complaint is a twofer - underpaid wages mean less revenue from payroll taxes and is usually a sign of tax evasion. HMRC operate a confidential hotline for reporting violations of the minimum wage law.
Where workers need to resolve a complaint, they can access mediation or binding arbitration completely free of charge. There is inevitably the risk of retaliatory action by an employer, but at least employees have the ability to enforce their rights without having to pay for legal representation.
Unions are part of the picture, but they're a reflection of a broader political culture. Trade unions can't turn the electorate socialist, but a socialist electorate can build strong trade unions.
Fines are a slap on the wrist. But take away freedom from the guilty and things will change. Quickly.
Robbery is a violent crime (robbery, by definition, consists of using force or threat of force/intimidation) that places members of the public in danger. For example, last month there was a Nigerian bank robbery last month where bank robbers armed with assault rifles and got into a gun battle with police officers that left 16 people dead. [1]
Now, you could make the argument that running around with an assault rifle and firing at people is its own crime, but when you walk into a bank and hand the teller a note that says "Give me all the money in the vault," you are stating by implication that you intend to do [very very bad thing] to them if they don't -- you are using the implied threat of violence. (By the same token, if you confront people in an alleyway and say "Hey buddy, give me your wallet," you can't defend yourself in court saying, "But I never threatened people with violence!" The threat of violence is implied by your demand.)
So, in your question, you ask why bank robbery (a violent crime) is a jailable offense, while wage theft (a white collar crime) isn't. I think there's a lot of support for the idea that "non-violent offenders don't belong in prison (but violent offenders do)."
It's the same reason that burglarizing your neighbor's house while they're on vacation is considered by most jurisdictions to be a less serious crime than mugging someone: robbers don't just victimize people by taking their money; they also threaten the victim's physical safety. I personally would feel much more rattled if I had $200 in cash taken from me at gunpoint than if I had a client stiff me for $500.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/africa/nigeria-bank-robbery/i...
And yet you'd still go to jail for doing that. Potentially for several years depending on the value of what you stole.
Wage theft orders of magnitude larger than that burglary would still typically only get a slap-on-the-wrist (relative to the ill-gotten gains) fine.
To turn your attempt on its head: why is robbing one person an offense that gets incarceration, but robbing a hundred people may not even get you prosecuted?
In the latter case (where you describe "robbing a hundred people"), are you referring to wage theft? Because if the employer is not using violence or threat of violence, then by definition they are not "robbing" people.
That was the entire point of my post: theft and robbery are not the same; robbery is theft + use/threat of violence.
And then you used the analogy of breaking into a house when nobody's home. And I pointed out that carries stiffer penalties than wage theft, despite not involving the use or threat of violence against a person.
Your attempt to split hairs to justify the near complete lack of punishment for wage theft is not succeeding.
As I said earlier, put people in jail for theft and fraud and you'll see those things decrease. As it is now, too often (white collar) crime __does__ pay.
If you purposely under pay someone, you are:
1) devaluing them as a human being and a citizen
2) you likely could be putting them under excessive stress due to lack of income.
3) if they are (mostly) minorites it could be argued that your decision is racism.
Etc.
Given what we know about the mind and the body, the gap between physical violence and emotional violence is becoming less and less disticnt. (Note: Studies have found the memory and effect of emotional abuse last longer).
It is at this illogocial to priortize one over the other. Theft is theft. In both case there are "side effects." In fact, I'd argue your better off witnessing a bank robbery then being subjected to wage theft.
None the less, fines are a slap on the wrist. Look at Wells Fargo. Disgusting. They say crime doesn't pay; unless of course your collar is white.
What the inspectors should do is give the contractors in question the figurative death penalty: permanently revoked contractor license, revocation of work orders, clawback of money already paid, jail time and serious fines for the individuals responsible. We for some reason have a high tolerance for white-collar crimes when we really should be prosecuting them vigorously.
I'm not saying this isn't a difficult burden for those who deal with the inspections, but in terms of priorities, huge numbers of people getting robbed by their employers would seem to deserve more attention?
One of the fundamental problems with employer/employee relations is that employers usually have more workers than employees have jobs. Losing your job is worse than having an employee quit. This fundamental imbalance of power means that we'll always need ways to even things out if we want reasonably fair situations for employees.
Labor laws and law enforcement can cover part of that. And we should certainly pursue it. But I think people should also pursue collective action, be that as formal as a union or as casual as Google's workers all pressuring their employers to stop doing military work. Resilient systems always have multiple ways to keep a problem from getting out of control.
Courts and law enforcement has evolved to become the very last resort for dealing with these white collar issues. It's become the cultural automatic solution to everything in American (or should I say western) government systems. Every time something goes wrong we're always told the solution is more new agencies to be formed and more complex - slow changing - laws. And these agencies and law always have little mandate to prove efficacy and ROI. They get put in place and stay that way for years. What matters was 'something had to be done' at the time.
So of course law enforcement hasn't been doing a good job at punishing what the rich do. Looking at law enforcement in isolation as the only solution of course is going to look like it's doing a poor job vs enforcing typical criminal laws, which tend to affect middle/lower class people far more.
As income is the greatest indicator of standard criminal acts (drug crimes, theft, violence, etc). Wealthy people simply don't get involved in such crimes and are far more likely to be involved in white collar crime, which thousands of US agencies have been set up to punitively enforce.
There may be serious issues in the justice system (in terms of sentencing, representation, law enforcement culture, etc) regarding the way the wealthy are treated in terms of standard criminal issues. But applying the same lense to white collar crime while ignoring the larger scope of regulatory frameworks and agency based intervention is to severely misunderstand the issue.
These non-law enforcement agencies play a massive role in the US economy.
Yes, the efficacy of always turning to agencies and regulatory frameworks can be honestly questioned and likely a source of many loopholes, but their pure effort and the subsequent costs they impose on the economic system in their efforts to stop this behaviour can't be downplayed... as if they aren't being pursued compared to 'blue collar' crime.
Involving more of the courts and law enforcement to white collar crime could legitimately be a solution here and the lack of real punishment for these actions is a real problem IMO. I'm merely saying the results today are a side effect of how things are done, the automatic political solutions being put in place every time something goes wrong in business, not that things are good as they are.
It took a social movement for prosecutors to get a fucking backbone when it came to rape and sexual misconduct among the powerful. It should be a lot easier than that for prosecutors to charge white collar criminals. This is just paper
Agreed. But read The Chickenshit Club if you want to get some insight as to why we no longer do this.
Unions suck, they really do. These things happen and people have to leave and find a new place, staying and litigating is not going to make any difference, and a union cannot spring money out of nowhere, they ould have the exact same issues.
No, absolutely not. There is nothing in that statement that is true.
"These things happen and people have to leave and find a new place, staying and litigating is not going to make any difference"
That is the most wishy washy way to wave away theft that I've ever heard. It basically sounds like you're saying, "It's going to happen, so just accept it, and don't try to change it."
"and a union cannot spring money out of nowhere, they ould have the exact same issues."
Except the companies doing this are benefitting from it, at the expense of their employees.
A union where joining is a costly-optionality will have no members. Thus any union that has any strength whatsoever will be able to restrict work one way or another.
> That is the most wishy washy way to wave away theft that I've ever heard. It basically sounds like you're saying, "It's going to happen, so just accept it, and don't try to change it."
More like suing the cow for spilt milk. If a company is going brankrupt in a disorderly manner (fast and in a short period of time) there is no justice.
> Except the companies doing this are benefitting from it, at the expense of their employees.
Yes but now the unions will join in on the pillage!
Except Americans have been indoctrinated for decades that unions=bad. This is the result.
And guess what? Mandatory arbitration robs you of any judicial remedies.
You literally just need to shoot an email saying you're taking them to court and often enough you're getting your money
https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/HowToFileWageClaim.htm (For California)
This implies everyone has a choice, no? When employees changing jobs or getting legal assistance isn't easy is exactly when owners do these sorts of things -- it is understood and incentivized
There are various considerations here beyond actual pay. What happens when a person making low wages finds a steady job with regular hours? It means they probably don't have to figure out how to shuttle their kids between multiple daycares / babysitters. These go on and on.
I know a person who made 9 an hour at a convenience store. Bad hours. Variable shifts. She got an offer to work for a non-profit hospital. Makes 13 an hour now with a set schedule (sorta), but lost her $500 a month SNAP benefits AND about $300 a month in daycare costs. If she gets a raise, she'll lose healthcare benefits for her kids, so her healthcare will essentially double (before any rate increases). She's proud to be making more money even though it's a net negative for her, and her employer has asked her regularly to cover other positions that get out later without getting extra pay. She would rather pick up the free hour here and there than have to deal with the hassle of going back to shift work.
It's not like you can walk into the police office and tell the officer that your boss isn't paying you to work extra hours, and even if you did, other businesses would quickly decide that it wasn't worth hiring an employee who wanted to make what they agreed to work for.
It's called the "welfare cliff". Check out the shocking graph in this article and/or testimony. (same graph)
http://www.learnliberty.org/blog/the-welfare-cliff-and-why-m...
http://waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Eri...
Assuming a 40-hour week (which could be 2 jobs) the worker will want to get $12 per hour. That is the local maxima. To get a better final result, after all the welfare and tax considerations, they'd have to earn $38 per hour.
So if you have a job paying $12 per hour, and are offered one paying $37 per hour, you'll lose money if you take it. Basically, welfare keeps people down. It keeps them in low-paying jobs because people get punished when they aspire for better.
The vast majority of people on welfare aren't actively avoiding employment. That's a white myth people tell each other to comfort themselves regarding their own mediocrity.
If you can't do that, you can get involved with local organizations and help others organize their workplaces. It takes a lot of effort to organize and there's a lot of room for volunteers.
Our labor is early in its commodification though. As we become less unique we will be easier to exploit. Organizing now isn't a bad idea.
This does mean that you might not get another job if you speak up, as always, but it does mean that if you are willing to change industries, your superior faces criminal charges.
Combined with the neglegible risk of not being able to feed your family, due to the vast social support net, you are actually able to stand by your principles, if you do care.
We often tend to forget that we fought hard for the five day week.
So while it's common for qualified jobs to have a 40h/WK contract, high workload opens the door to extend the week to 6 days, "Saturday work".
Again for qualified jobs you better compensate your people well for that...
For the floating average of 8h per day the rules then reference your usual regular work week. So if you are on a 5 day contract (like most people these days), that's where the 40h week comes from. For those amongst us who regularly do 6 days, 48h is perfectly legal in Germany. And temporarily those numbers go up to 50/60h weeks. The floating mean has to go down to 40/48 though. Iirc within a 6 month period, which is not law but usual (court) reading of the law.
It is possible that German law may be stricter than EU law.
Another clever trick is that 48 hours is averaged. Where the nature of the work makes daily leisure time pointless the 48 hours are averaged over an entire year, so maybe an oil worker puts in 10 hours per day for 2 weeks out on the ocean... and then they go home for two entire weeks before their next session. On average that's still under 48 hours per week
> April 2000, overtime pay was enacted for all who work in California. A new law (AB60, Assembly Bill 60) established the 40-hour week and mandated overtime pay for work over 40 hours. In reaction, the NACCB (the recruiter association) made a number of legislative manuvers to eliminate overtime pay ... the original law gave everyone overtime pay. The recruiters wanted a new law to exempt Silicon Valley so that computer workers got no overtime pay. We tech writers wanted overtime, so the recruiter’s law couldn’t affect the tech writers. So we added our clause to their law: our exemption from recruiter’s exemption ... Engineers have always refused to organize or even to be aware of their interests: they think recruiters are their friends. One engineer said to me: “Engineers think they’re so smart that no one could do such a thing to them. Wow. They got really screwed.” The law is an annual loss of as much as $50-75,000 dollars per each engineer. Yep, it’s legal. The recuiters wrote a law to take away their money. ... If you’re an engineer, or you make over $41/hr, and you’re not covered by the NWU clause, the recruiters are stripping away your overtime pay.
Separately, a modern example of collective bargaining, timed for next week’s WWDC, https://www.wired.com/story/apple-app-developers-union/amp
> a group identifying themselves as The Developers Union wrote that "it's been difficult for developers to earn a living by writing software" built on Apple's existing values. The group then asked Apple to allow free trials for apps, which would give customers "the chance to experience our work for themselves, before they have to commit to making a purchase." The grassroots effort is being lead by Jake Schumacher, the director of App: The Human Story; software developer Roger Ogden and product designer Loren Morris, who both worked for a timesheet app that was acquired last year; and Brent Simmons...
You should talk to your boss about this. Seriously its time to move to a new job or you teach your boss get used to "not being satisfied".
I was reading your post at, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16995260
you said that some of the problems you face are ...
- Doorman accepts dozens of package deliveries each day which get sent email ...
What is the problem here? that doorman has to write apartment numbers? sorry just little lost.
- I have to approve lots of expenses not knowing costs
don't you over time start to get an idea how much repairs cost?
- Contractors are unreliable
Don't contractors have yelp reviews?
This seems to be a huge problem in many fields. I know it's a problem in medicine, and regulation of work hours doesn't appear to be particularly effective. This 2006 article compares the workload of medical students (who are paying to work in order to learn and gain experience) before and one year after work hours regulation:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/203251
> Working shifts greater than 30 consecutive hours was reported by 67.4% (95% CI, 64.8%-70.0%)
> Averaged over 4 weeks, 43.0% (95% CI, 40.3%-45.7%) reported working more than 80 hours weekly
> 43.7% (95% CI, 41.0%-46.5%) reported not having 1 day in 7 off work duties
> 29.0% (95% CI, 28.7%-29.7%) of reported work weeks were more than 80 hours per week
> 12.1% (95% CI, 11.8%-12.6%) were 90 or more hours per week
> 3.9% (95% CI, 3.7%-4.2%) were 100 or more hours per week
> reported mean work duration decreased 5.8% from 70.7 (95% CI, 70.5-70.9) hours to 66.6 (95% CI, 66.3-66.9) hours per week (P<.001)
> reported mean sleep duration increased 6.1% (22 minutes) from 5.91 (95% CI, 5.88-5.94) hours to 6.27 (95% CI, 6.23-6.31) hours per night (P<.001)
> reported mean sleep during extended shifts decreased 4.5%, from 2.69 (95% CI, 2.66-2.73) hours to 2.57 (95% CI, 2.52-2.62) hours (P<.001)
This directly contradicts official data published by the accreditation council, which claimed compliance rates were much higher. Apparently, people lie about the hours they worked because they don't want their programs to be shut down:
> residency programs and residents themselves face a direct conflict of interest in acknowledging violations to the ACGME
> because the identities of those reporting violations have not been adequately protected in the past
> Because disclosure of violations to the ACGME could lead to loss of program accreditation, disclosure could threaten residents' own careers
Similar conflicts of interest seem to arise in pretty much every field. Speaking up about violations or taking companies to court appears to harm employees in the long term. The problem is probably much larger than what we're seeing.
In any event, it's very different problem than property theft and shouldn't be compared as such.
Theft is theft, even if you have other relationships with the thief that might be endangered by enforcing the letter of the law.
You're right that corporations won't follow regulations that aren't enforced, which is why workers need to be informed of their rights, given legal counsel, educated and enabled to organize.
This is the exact same fallacious "threat" used against minimum wage hikes.
I'm reality the employees don't get fired or have their hours cut (c.f. dube, Lester, Reich). Profit margins take the vast majority of the hit instead (c.f. draca, Machin, reenen).
I'll confess I don't understand this distinction.
>and employers, like most people who cheat on regulations, often can't or won't shoulder the extra cost if those regulations are suddenly enforced
I'm also confused by this transition from wage theft to the subject of sudden enforcement of regulation. Are you suggesting that the latter is the explanation for the former, and that this diminishes the ethical import of wage theft?
Lastly I'm also not sure why you're claiming it's theoretical. They put forward a specific number: $933 million derived from federal and state data on wage-and-hour violation settlements.
Theft and "wage theft" are both violations of law. The article shows that economic harm due to the latter far exceeds the former, yet penalties are light, spottily enforced, and usually involve no jail time for perpetrators.
I don't see any nuance in "wage theft" that should shield those employers who do it from criminal prosecution and jail if found guilty. If they can't obey the law, take them off the board and leave it open for those who can.
Finally, there's plenty of precedent for jail as a penalty in other economic crimes lacking any aspect of violence. Insider trading. Stock fraud. etc.
It absolutely, positively, is.
"and employers, like most people who cheat on regulations, often can't or won't shoulder the extra cost if those regulations are suddenly enforced, and will cut hours or people instead."
Why on earth does anyone think this is a valid argument? "If we don't let them cheat their employees and fuck them over, they won't offer a job so they can fuck employees over"?
"Workers are certainly being shafted but probably not anywhere near to the extent in reality as is being presented here in theory."
You're going to have to provide your own evidence for this statement.
"In any event, it's very different problem than property theft and shouldn't be compared as such."
Wrong. If anything, it's worse, because an employer committing wage theft is abusing a position of power over their employee.
Yes, wage theft is bigger numerically. But a reduction in wage theft is going to be mirrored by a drop in the amount of wealth available. By definition, the same or less work is being done for a higher cost; so by examining the net situation, someone is going to have less actual stuff (and I can say with confidence, it is not going to be the rich who do without). Increasing the cost of labour will put people out of work.
Wage theft is one of those victimless crimes where both parties have agreed that a situation is the best alternative and the government is declaring that they are wrong. It is a lot more delicate than, say, gay marriage, because all workers would prefer to have more money, and by far most workers would be happier if they didn't have to work. But, end of the day, just because the government says a worker is entitled doesn't mean the worker is truly unhappy with what they get. In an extreme case, I've worked in situations where I have been subject to wage theft (~10% lower compensation than I should have legally been getting), and I tried to keep that off anyone's radar because I wouldn't have had a job otherwise and I was being paid plenty.
Workers take the best option they have; possibly making that option uneconomic is not a good idea. This is not how, eg, China, is lifting people out of poverty.
In a situation where wage theft is happening and then it stops happening, the money doesn't get thrown in a garbage bin. The stolen money goes to the worker rather than the employer.
If I got paid my average hourly rate for 10 unpaid hours per week, I'd make roughly $12,000 more per year than I do now. $12,000 which would go towards my student loans, or a down payment for a house, or just buying random shit. Instead that $12,000 goes to the corporation I work for.
You might argue that they can do that to 10 people and afford to hire another engineer, which is great, except now we have a corporation who is subsidized by unpaid labor, not by being an effective corporation.
The three outcomes are:
1) Workers get a bigger proportion of a smaller total
2) Workers get the same proportion of a smaller total
3) Workers get a smaller proportion of a smaller total
The pro-labour-laws types have to be very certain that they can force outcome 1, but there are 2 ways in 3 that the outcome is bad, on net, for workers. Especially if the job they were working in was the best option they had. Workers might even be getting less overall (through reduced job availability) when individual workers get more due to reductions in the number of jobs created.
Wage theft is most definitely not victimless. There is a very, very clear victim in that instance.
"and I tried to keep that off anyone's radar because I wouldn't have had a job otherwise and I was being paid plenty."
That's not true in the least. Any employer that is telling you that is flat out lying to you.
"Workers take the best option they have; possibly making that option uneconomic is not a good idea."
No. Just no. Why do you feel that employers are entitled to cheap labor?
> That's not true in the least.
It is perfectly true, just not a very normal case. I'd put it to you that I was a bit more involved in the negotiating than you were.
> No. Just no. Why do you feel that employers are entitled to cheap labor?
I don't think that. The argument is that employers and employees are entitled to sort out wages between each other and are entitled on whatever they agree to. I don't think the government has a role tilting the power balance in favour of employees.
I'm in favour of things work hours being explicit in any contract and being enforced. Being expected to work unpaid overtime is obscene; the contract hours should be longer an the wages lower so people know what is expected of them.
So true... Every weekend I go for interviews and get job offers, and I have 6 months of rent and bill money saved up in case of an act of God. The last time I lost my employment I just called up one of the employers and accepted the job. It's very weird that people act like they don't do this as well.
Because the alternative is homelessness.
"It is perfectly true, just not a very normal case. I'd put it to you that I was a bit more involved in the negotiating than you were."
No, it's not true. Just because they told you that, and you fell for it, doesn't make it true.
"Being expected to work unpaid overtime is obscene"
And yet, here you are defending the practice of wage theft.