Wage theft
[1][2] The Economic Policy Institute reported in 2014 that survey evidence suggests wage theft costs US workers billions of dollars a year.
[3] Some rights violated by wage theft have been guaranteed to workers in the United States in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
Some exemptions to this rule apply to public service agencies or to employees who meet certain requirements in accordance to their job duties along with a salary of no less than $684 a week.
[8] A 2017 study found that U.S. employers underpay 2.4 million sub-minimum wage workers over $15 billion yearly, amounting to an average of $64 per week, or nearly a quarter of earnings.
The difference between the two classifications depends on the permanency of the employment, opportunity for profit and loss, the worker's level of self-employment along with their degree of control.
Extrapolating from these figures, low wage workers in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City lost more than $2.9 billion due to employment and labor law violations.
Education, longer tenured employment, and English proficiency proved to be influential factors in employee populations.
In one study, the manufacturing industry, repair services, and private home employment were at the highest risk for violations at the workplace.
[17] In a report released on November 26, 2011, a Palm Beach County organization, People Engaged in Active Community Efforts (PEACE), sent postcards to Macy's and Bealls executives as a form of protest.
State Senator Tony Bisignano, Democrat from Des Moines and Senator William Dotzler, a Democrat from Waterloo, Iowa, proposed a bill to strengthen wage law enforcement on January 28, 2015, "since Iowa's wage theft laws are so weak they are impossible to enforce".
[24] Employee Haro sued her employer under a California minimum wage statute for failing to compensate her for time spent taking mandated COVID tests, which required her to arrive at work 15 minutes before the start of her shift.
In that case, the screening procedures would simply have occurred while employees were on the clock and [plaintiff] would not have a minimum-wage claim.”[25] In the United States, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to keep detailed records regarding the identity of workers and hours worked for all workers who are protected under federal minimum wage laws.
[28][better source needed] As of September 2011 Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee and Virginia did not require this documentation.
[35] A 2020 report by Unions NSW found that more than 3000 foreign-language job ads offered illegally lower wages.
[36] A 2022 report by the same union found that over 7,000 job advertisements written in foreign languages offered illegally low wages.
[37][38] In Australia, another form of wage theft is the failure of employers to pay the mandatory minimum contribution to employee's superannuation fund.
[39] In 2019, Australian celebrity chef George Calombaris admitted to underpaying $7.83 million in wages to 515 employees, which was only discovered after a Fair Work Ombudsman audit revealed the scale of the error following one complaint from an underpaid staff member.
[41] In 2012 in Windsor, Ontario nearly 200 people gathered at a grassroots meeting to discuss daily workplace challenges that workers face, including wage theft, which a labor union president described as "a sad state of affairs when you have a corporation that can dictate items".
[43][44][45] A 2017 report by Middlesex University and Trust for London revealed that at least 2 million workers in Britain are losing an estimated £3 billion in unpaid holiday pay and wages per year.
