Help End the Wage Theft Epidemic

In the United States, wage theft -- employers illegally underpaying or financially exploiting employees -- has become an epidemic. This form of labor exploitation affects low-income workers, women, and immigrants disproportionally. For years the wage theft epidemic has spread, but now we have some hopeful opportunities to protect workers from exploitation.

Author and founder of Interfaith Worker Justice Kim Bobo describes the startling rates of wage theft in the U.S. in her book Wage Theft In America. Some of the harsh realities she shares are:

• 60% of nursing homes stole workers’ wages.
• 89% of non-monitored garment factories in Los Angeles and 67% of non-monitored garment factories in New York City stole workers’ wages.
• 25% of tomato producers, 35% of lettuce producers, 51% of cucumber producers, 58% of onion producers, and 62% of garlic producers hiring farm workers stole workers’ wages.
• Almost 50% of day laborers, who tend to focus on construction work, have had their wages stolen.

How has wage theft become an American epidemic? One reason is that labor laws preventing wage theft are rarely enforced. In part this is due to the Department of Labor's failure over the past decade to address the issue and the Bush administration's unabashed pandering to big business interests.  In part it was due to government processes and policies that ranged from inefficient to outright deceptive. And it part it was due to a lack of resources and agents to enforce penalties for wage theft.  In short, enforcement of labor laws has been about as tidy as a four-year-old eating ice cream on a tilt-a-whirl. But the good news is the Obama administration and Secretary Solis can (and I believe will) do something about it.

Secretary Solis has already proclaimed her commitment to reducing wage theft in America, in part by hiring 250 new agents to enforce labor violations.  This is a huge improvement and a great start. However, you can make an even bigger dent in the wage theft epidemic by supporting the Employee Free Choice Act. The Employee Free Choice Act will allow workers to form a union when most of them want one and will help protect workers against wage theft and other exploitative violations, including human trafficking. It's important not to let the great strides toward protecting workers fall off the national agenda, or the wage theft epidemic will spread until it makes the swine flu look like a hangnail.

Photo Credit: Worker wearing protective gloves by NIOSH