The Petty Pilfering of Minutes: Wage Theft in Contemporary America
Northwestern University political scientist Daniel Galvin has an eye-opening post in The Washington Post about wage theft, a topic I’ve written about before. Based on extensive research, he’s made the following findings (my summary here is abbreviated; for the fuller findings, read Galvin’s excellent piece):
1. Percentage of low-wage workers who have suffered wage theft: 16%. (Other studies report higher percentages.)
2. Average percentage of a worker’s wages lost to wage theft: 26%.
3. Where wage theft tends to happen: private homes, nail salons, food service industries.
4. Whom it tends to happen to: women, people of color, people under 30, non-citizens, non-union members, people who didn’t finish high school or who live in the South.
5. How it happens: “employers often commit wage theft by mandating off-the-clock work, paying their employees a flat rate irrespective of hours worked, making illegal deductions, withholding tips, misclassifying their employees as exempt, or simply refusing to pay for work performed.”
6. How it can be stopped: treble damages for violators.
Not exactly what Marx had in mind when he cited the petty pilfering of minutes, but getting close.