Wage Theft is Theft

A colleague of mine, their union discovered, during recent contract negotiations, that for many years their employer was shorting them wages by not following the seniority schedule they had committed to. For some employees that wage theft, and it is theft, amounted to between $20,000 and $30,000.

So as part of their new contract the employer is settling that “oversight” by paying out something like $7000 to the people they stole from. That is between 24 and 33¢ on the dollar.

And this applies to many employees. Even if it were twenty, that could be $600,000, stolen, for which the only punishment is having to pay as little as one quarter of it back.

And to add insult to injury, because the restitution is a lump sum, it is subject to maximized withholding. So $25,000 turns into $7000 turns into $5000. That is some bullshit.

Wage theft, in the US at least, represents a dollar value greater than ALL OTHER THEFT of every kind COMBINED. Most theft is wage theft. And even though this is the most pernicious and commonplace form of stealing, no one gets arrested, no one goes to jail.

If you took $100 from the till at work, you could spend a decade in prison. If your boss takes $25,000 from your paychecks, well… that is no big deal, right? “Here is a check for a fifth of what we stole. Now get back to work.”

It sure is a big deal. And we need to start treating this kind of theft, the most common kind of theft, at least as seriously as any other property crime.

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Dave

I am an experienced freelance graphic artist and sometime canoeist. I feel strongly about the quality of professional work and like sitting by a remote lake on a sun-warmed rock.

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