How many are against space Karen
I thought that the American way (these days) would be to sack the State labor investigators - problem solved
I do not like how the fraud of wage theft is a civil matter but taking a long bathroom break is stealing from the company.
Years ago i had a friend who got charged for theft from his employer- he was GM of a restaurant that was in the process of going bankrupt. Checks were a month behind including credit card tips. The last of thw staff were bassically at the were walking if we dont get paid today moment.
So he took the weekends take, like $20k, and paid out most of the paychecks in arrears, allong witb enough to keep the vendors that were about to stop making deliveries. He got arrested, spent the night in lockup and had to pay bail.
He ended up getting saved from having to go to court though; his lawyer was able to convince the DA that he needed to look into the owners finances, and it turned out there was a reason the restaurant was going bankrupt- the owner was straight up ‘investing’ all the money, on short term stock market plays, including the tips, (which is illegal) had made some bad plays and dug himself a pretty big hole. The owner never got arrested though, he just got fined, which ended up getting paid out of the bankruptcy. At least the staff and afaik all the vendors got paid though.
Here’s a reminder that wage theft is the single largest form of theft, larger than every other type of theft combined. It is literally over 51% of all theft. And it goes largely unpunished, because the people being stolen from either don’t or can’t speak out about it.
And wage theft isn’t just refusing to pay someone. Employers are smarter than that, because they know something so blatant and easy to prove will get them slapped. Instead, they do things like skim off the top by unfairly adjusting your clock in/out times. Or they’ll do things like require you to show up 15 minutes before your shift, then refuse to let you clock in until your shift is scheduled to start. Or they’ll force you to clock out right when your shift is scheduled to be done, (under the guise of avoiding overtime) even if you have another 5-10 minutes of work to do. Theft by break infringement is also common, where employers will have you clock out for your break, then try to dictate how you spend your time on the break.
All of those tiny things, multiplied by thousands of employees at a large company, adds up to theft on a truly massive scale.
If you started walking into a gas station at the same time every day, and blatantly stealing a $2 candy bar, they’d have a cop waiting for you to show up by the end of the first week. But if that same gas station (with locations all across the country) systematically steals $2 from thousands of employees on every single shift, that’s a civil issue but it’s not worth the money for any single person to sue (if the employees could even afford a lawyer) and the department of labor is critically understaffed.
my state (victoria, as) recently made intentional wage theft a criminal offense, and both companies and individuals (directors, hr, managers, etc) can all be liable … it’s amazing 😍
Remember, minimum wage in Texas is the federal minimum wage, $7.25 an hour. Texas employers have the option to only pay the minimum, then have the gall to steal what little their workers make. Slavery with extra steps.
I’m always shocked that the federal minimum is so low. My first job in high school (bussing tables in a chain restaurant) I made $10 an hour. Plus a share of the servers tips. In 1992.
Chris Rock said that minimum wage is your boss telling you that he wants to pay you less, but it’s AGAINST THE LAW!
Is that what your minimum wage is??!? Jesus Christ America. It’s £13.50 in the UK which is around $17 and that’s still shit.
I should clarify, it’s the federal minimum wage. This means that employers everywhere, (with limited exceptions,) must pay $7.25 an hour. The federal minimum wage doesn’t stop states or localities from adopting a higher minimum wage.
The Georgia state minimum wage is $5.15. Employees covered under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act are subject to the federal minimum wage of $7.25, but those not covered under the FLSA may be paid the state minimum wage of $5.15. The highest minimum wage is in the district of columbia, which is Washington DC, the capital of the country.
The federal minimum is trash, but 68% of states have done better than the federal minimum.
And then there’s the federal minimum wage for tipped workers, which is a paltry $2.13/hr. If the tips don’t bring that up to at least match the normal minimum (the $7.25/hr figure) then employers are supposed to pay them more to make up the difference, but they basically never do. Tip theft is also super common, including with some of the online ordering apps.
I’m a millennial. In my 40’s. My first job was working at a video rental store that no longer exists. When I was working there, they raised the minimum wage to 7.25 an hour. And in my entire adult working life since, that rate has not increased, now going on 20 years.
The fact that over 30% of the states in this country STILL only pay that same minimum wage is abhorrent. No one in those states has made a dime in 20 years, they have only had their purchasing power decrease as inflation outpaced their pay.
An entire generation of Americans worked the best 20 years of their entire adult lives just to lose money from doing it if it happened in those states.
100% agree with you. I’m 45. while I worked my way through college, I made something like 14K a year, which was enough to cover a room rental, and food. When I started graduate school 4 years later, I managed 26K. I finished my PhD in 2008 and graduated into recession where the federal minimum for postdoctoral fellows was around 35K. NIH funded positions and labs had to pay the minimum, and generally didn’t pay more than that. (When I computed the hours I was working vs my fixed salary, I was making $10 an hour, It’s what pushed me to leave my field of study.) Now I make $52K. My income has doubled in the past 20 years, but costs for housing, food, and healthcare have far outpaced the wage increases I’ve seen. I’m no better off today than when I was a graduate student.
I think we should have a reworked economy. Aside from having UBI that grants free utilities, basic shelter, and food, I think that all occupations should have fixed incomes, tied to a rank. East Coast, West Coast, an waiter gets $40k a year. An astronaut, who has the highest ranked job, gets $100k. After taxes, waiters have $30k and the astro a $60k income. CEOs get their rank by votes from workers of their company. By fixing incomes and preventing distortions like billionaires, we can make it easier to diagnose whether a company or person are making too much money. This combined with absolute wealth caps, would make it easier to correct wealth issues.
All waiters know they are supposed to have $30k from their job, thus they can complain about the problem without bullshit excuses from businesses. Plus, free food and shelter guaranteed by government allows for unlimited unionization and job searching, which puts the onus on employers to do better: Without being able to coerce people into working, companies have to do the right thing.
We can have a government-funded department that sets the income ranks of jobs according to the amount of effort, risk, and knowledge a job requires, and makes that the standard that all employees can expect. If a job’s income weirdly deviates from that of other similar jobs, workers of that occupation can unionize to force the government to properly assess the value of the job.
Gosh, maybe harsh punishments should be applied here rather than on 16-year-olds caught with drugs.
Like “if you are responsible for approving time cards and there’s a significant percentage of employees who were shorted hours, you’re going to prison.”
https://www.victorianchamber.com.au/news/understanding-criminal-wage-theft-laws
this is the way
The new criminal offence of wage theft, which commenced on 1 January 2025, targets deliberate underpayment practices by employers.
Key changes:
- Intentional Conduct: Penalties apply if an employer intentionally engages in conduct that results in the underpayment of employee’s wages or entitlements.
- Liability: Both companies and individuals, such as directors, managers, or payroll personnel, can be held criminally liable for wage theft.
- Severe Penalties: The penalties for wage theft include fines of up to $8.25 million for corporations, and up to 10 years of imprisonment for individuals.
It is important to note that this offence is not intended to capture inadvertent errors or genuine mistakes.
Send in the National Guard!
Can’t say I’m surprised.
Maybe they should hire more agents, and use the fines they collect from all the criminal employers to pay for it
As a former Texas resident, (spent 3 years in Dallas,) I can tell you that as a whole the state would rather police a woman’s uterus than capitalism and employers.
“As a whole” is the problem. Texas is really five different states, staple-gunned together.
They’ll fine the workers instead, and give it to the corporations to soothe their hurt feelings.
While this is not good, it is good that wage theft is being reported. As nothing makes it to the news without someone pointing it out to reporters, this is a strong signal from those involved that that everyone in Texas should call their representative to complain about the investigators needing more funding.
It is a signal to everyone NOT in Texas to not go there.
