More than 200,000 workers across the country are owed $163.3 million in back pay, according to a website maintained by the Department of Labor (DOL). This is money companies have paid after they were found liable for wage theft violations — like withholding tips from workers — but has not been claimed. Workers who believe they are owed wages can check the DOL website,
Good report. Too bad wage theft policy was set up to fail and likely will stay the way it is, but articles like these can help. The removal of inspectors in all types of Commerce and industry has generally not served the public interest.
Keep pressing. The only way to effect change is to flip a high beam on the problem. You have great headlights here on PI.
Oh, is this kind of reporting ever needed! What a world of hopelessness and despair. Hey, Joe Biden, the victims of this abuse of low level, lowly paid workers would hardly be excited to vote for anyone. So, here's a cause our sitting president should take up immediately and with appointments to the DOL and quick hiring of labor inspectors.
By the way, I can't think of anyone sharp enough in speech and comprehension to deliver this news other than Elizabeth Warren (or Katie Porter). This crime being suffered by our under class must be dramatically explained and dealt with now,
The DoL needs adequate funding to hire more inspectors. The Republicans are going to block this at every turn. Vote Blue so these necessary budget items can be fully funded.
Voting blue will improve so many things that are wrong & dysfunctional in America.
OT I recently tested positive for COVID (I am fully vaxxed but have a weakened immune system). We’ve all seen the advertisements for Paxlovid, right? ‘If it’s COVID, Paxlovid’ Yup, except it costs over $1000 out of pocket and I have what I had considered to be ‘good insurance’. There’s another Republican consequence, high prescription prices & little health insurance regulation.
This is a stunning report, Judd, and as usual, it concerns an issue that has been right under our noses for years. Where to begin to resolve it? Labor law, one assumes, which at the moment, is stymied by our political dysfunction. I hope that the Substack community picks up the thread and takes it from here. Keep up the excellent work.
I work retail. The rise in automated scheduling means an algothrim is deciding how many people are working per day, and how many hours per day, without a human really taking a close look, in a definite shift to cutting hours in general.
We haven't worked an 8 hour shift in several years. Even during Christmas, the most we worked was 7.50 hours, deliberately (if you are scheduled for 8 you might go into overtime, so if you schedule under you basically get the same amount of work out of me, but no chance of going over). Most shifts in my department are now 5-6 hours, since business is slow. This not only affects our paycheck, but those who get insurance through the company are at risk of losing insurance if they don't work enough hours. A co worker asked me to trade shifts, the resulting change left her several hours shorter because my shift was 5 hours while hers was 7. She will need to find a way to work 2 more hours, probably by skipping a lunch break for 2 days. Another co worker noticed that if she had been scheduled 30 minutes longer, she would have been entitled to a 1 hour lunch break. Instead, she got got 15 minutes. Of course, it's deliberate.
Are you Unionized? Because wage theft is something that a Union would be in the best position to fight. They can damage the reputation of that place for not abiding by a court's decision. the courts? You'd have to go back to court... and how? with no money.
It's not wage theft, it's a scheduling issue. They can claim that business is down, which is true, to quantify why we are working fewer hours. I'm simply saying the fact that it's done by a computer, not a human, means nuances are lost.
But as you indicate, this type of scheduling is done deliberately and the consequences [shorter breaks,, risk of losing health insurance] are doled out by the establishment/ company. Those consequences is not meted out by a computer. You know the saying :GI-GO. [Garbage in Garbage out] Those rules are made by humans who then put it in the computer. Like you said: It is deliberate.
In smaller outfits, Scheduling isn't always done by a computer, but I digress.
While we are on it, How would you feel about the Social Security you are accruing by working those hours?
IMHO, there should not be this Part time/ Full time dichotomy: You should be accruing benefits according to the exact number of hours worked: If you work 5 hours, you should get the 5 hours of credit for that day., If working 10, you would get the 10. If the next day you work 6 or 9, that should accrue to your benefit.
In these age of computers, that is something that would better protect the workers.
Thank you for the timely and welcome article. The only item and I may have missed it is the. Website is business centered, not customer centered. You have to search each company by name first. An employee should be able to enter their name and then search. Companies change names, hide behind other names, etc.
Yes, I tried it. The result was the company looked up doesn't exist (not true). Which led me to surmise there's no record of them cheating employees but I do not know that for certain. Especially since they didn't rehire me after covid due to my age. A lawyer agreed based on my evidence but his partner didn't want to rake my case because there's "no money in restaurants", boy was he wrong. It's a huge restaurant group. 4 years later and my blood still boils.
Attorneys belong to the Judicial system. It is appalling that the excuse is "there is no money in restaurants". You might want to talk to the ACLU. They do a lot of stuff pro-bono.
Not rehiring you after COVID *due to your age* is yet another offense that the ACLU or a Union could help you with. If it was only spoken, you may not have a good case, but if they put it in writing, you could hand that to the ACLU.
In my School District, I was let go [temporarily] because they had financial constraints [Scott Walker, the "right to work -for less Governor we had at the time was very active in tanking Public Education].
I contacted my union and I went to the board just asking for a short letter stipulating that this 'temporary' layoff would not result in a blotch on my record. They actually wrote me a nice letter stating that I was only let go temporarily because of financial concerns but that my teaching record was great. I was getting toward the end of my career and was a bit worried that they would make that temporary layoff permanent. To their credit, they didn't, but perhaps it was because I held in my hand their judgement that I was a good teacher with great teaching qualifications.
Most teachers were re-hired that year. The Board did that a few times over several budgets. Secretly, I think it was a way to make our Union feel [we still had a Union] that we had better not make wave and accept the contract they were giving us or else. We made minimal gains those years.
Employees have to make a point of just "chewing the fat" once in a while amongst themselves, just to see where they are standing if they are not allowed to join a Union. Playing cards, having a party, this kind of thing.
I think, at least the ACLU could give you good [and free] advice on how to proceed or whether to proceed.
"The dairy farm, owned by Keith Schaefer and his daughter Megan Hill, regularly shaved 12 to 32 hours from each two week paycheck and did not pay overtime premiums, Ellison said. Workers also said they weren’t paid for the first two weeks they worked and never received their final paychecks.
"In an attempt to hide its violations, Evergreen Acres Dairy did not keep employment records required by law, destroyed timecards and falsified records, according to the complaint. …
"Some employees who worked 12-hour day shifts shared the same bed with others who worked 12-hour night shifts, and they had their wages automatically deducted for rent.
"Workers lived in garages, barns and other buildings unfit for human habitation. Some lived with bedrooms and bathrooms covered in mold, while others didn’t even have toilets. …
"Schaefer allegedly threatened to kill one employee and reminded the workers of a dog he recently killed while he told other employees — many of whom are undocumented immigrants — that he would call the police on them.
“'This isn’t some dystopian fiction. This isn’t ‘The Jungle’ describing the meatpacking industry 100 years ago in Chicago. This is Minnesota. This is Minnesota right now,' Ellison said."
During the summers of the early 1970s, I worked in fast food, and it was a spoken understatement that you punched out at 37 hours to remain part-time (aka "no benefits") and continued working. Managers were salaried; I remember a first level manager saying he worked 108 hours in a week. Back then, there were several applicants for each job, so if you pushed back, you got fired.
Thank you, Judd and Tesnim. Biden could vigorously pursue minimum wage, family leave policy, wage theft, and many other issues to win over working voters.
If this amount is what is said to be owed workers, the true amount is surely much larger by omission or commission. As Lincoln commented, a mouse hole bears looking into. Repayment is not enough; prospective change is also required, but if Congress had not addressed this tip versus hourly rate in decades, it will not do so with current majority.
What a sad state of affairs we've been collectively pushed into by miscreants and MF's!
The Party of Constant criminals aka GQP (or is it QQP? Listen to Comer and you tell me) want just this. The wild wild west of capitalism all over again. Capped with the rise of the greatest snake oil salesman of all!
I got maybe another 20-25 years left at 65 so, I'll do what I can for as long as I can to hold back the hordes of maga.
Adam, I prefer ATP—American Terrorist Party—for the GOP, and despite voting for whatever Dem is running for Federal office, as a lesser of two evils, I call them ATPLite® for obvious reasons.
I'm with ya and yes, the dems ain't all they're cracked up to be. As a Black man in American and a former US Marine, I truly resent how a lot on "our" side is framed and done but...
In MY household, we DO NOT support terrorism or terroristas of ANY stripe!
This prohibition of course precludes anything with an "r" in front of it's name from entry unless it's rice, raisins, Retsina, Ricola's or something.
From a political perspective, this is a tricky fight. Republicans will perceive and twist any attack against wage theft as an attack against small business. Absolutely, government needs to take action. Just get and stay out in front of any right wing misinformation.
Thanks for this reporting Team PO. Unfortunately, the larger issue, that Capitalism is inherently corrupt—profit is wage theft, cannot be discussed. Capitalism is the umbrella under which Slavery, and general population control, exits. We do not need to look just at Marx-Engels for proof, Sheldon Wolin’s idea’s on “inverted totalitarianism”, and Elizabeth Anderson’s lecture series and book “Private Government” are contemporary examples showing how our economic system, Capitalism, removes any real democratic structure. Most of us work, or used to, an 8 hour day, which realistically means 10 with travel to and fro. In that ten hour shift we are governed by the rules of our employers. So, 10 plus 8, being generous, for sleep, leaves 6 hours for ourselves. Now, technological advances have furthered our submission via social control mechanisms like Facebook, Twitter, and the like. Stories abound on how employers monitor our feeds for any behavior that they may deem detrimental to the company.
Thatcher’s proclamation, “There is no alternative”, was more of a command, at best an opinion, but not fact.
Good report. Too bad wage theft policy was set up to fail and likely will stay the way it is, but articles like these can help. The removal of inspectors in all types of Commerce and industry has generally not served the public interest.
Keep pressing. The only way to effect change is to flip a high beam on the problem. You have great headlights here on PI.
Oh, is this kind of reporting ever needed! What a world of hopelessness and despair. Hey, Joe Biden, the victims of this abuse of low level, lowly paid workers would hardly be excited to vote for anyone. So, here's a cause our sitting president should take up immediately and with appointments to the DOL and quick hiring of labor inspectors.
By the way, I can't think of anyone sharp enough in speech and comprehension to deliver this news other than Elizabeth Warren (or Katie Porter). This crime being suffered by our under class must be dramatically explained and dealt with now,
The DoL needs adequate funding to hire more inspectors. The Republicans are going to block this at every turn. Vote Blue so these necessary budget items can be fully funded.
100%
Voting blue will improve so many things that are wrong & dysfunctional in America.
OT I recently tested positive for COVID (I am fully vaxxed but have a weakened immune system). We’ve all seen the advertisements for Paxlovid, right? ‘If it’s COVID, Paxlovid’ Yup, except it costs over $1000 out of pocket and I have what I had considered to be ‘good insurance’. There’s another Republican consequence, high prescription prices & little health insurance regulation.
VOTE BLUE & DUMP REPUBLICANS!
Oh my! I hope you recover quickly and fully. Hugs.
I am already recovering, thank you. A positive of being fully vaxxed is the weakened effects COVID had on me.
That is the point I came to make.
Or Bernie Sanders!
This is a stunning report, Judd, and as usual, it concerns an issue that has been right under our noses for years. Where to begin to resolve it? Labor law, one assumes, which at the moment, is stymied by our political dysfunction. I hope that the Substack community picks up the thread and takes it from here. Keep up the excellent work.
We've seen PI's positive effect on the level of reportage before. I agree and hope for the same.
I work retail. The rise in automated scheduling means an algothrim is deciding how many people are working per day, and how many hours per day, without a human really taking a close look, in a definite shift to cutting hours in general.
We haven't worked an 8 hour shift in several years. Even during Christmas, the most we worked was 7.50 hours, deliberately (if you are scheduled for 8 you might go into overtime, so if you schedule under you basically get the same amount of work out of me, but no chance of going over). Most shifts in my department are now 5-6 hours, since business is slow. This not only affects our paycheck, but those who get insurance through the company are at risk of losing insurance if they don't work enough hours. A co worker asked me to trade shifts, the resulting change left her several hours shorter because my shift was 5 hours while hers was 7. She will need to find a way to work 2 more hours, probably by skipping a lunch break for 2 days. Another co worker noticed that if she had been scheduled 30 minutes longer, she would have been entitled to a 1 hour lunch break. Instead, she got got 15 minutes. Of course, it's deliberate.
Are you Unionized? Because wage theft is something that a Union would be in the best position to fight. They can damage the reputation of that place for not abiding by a court's decision. the courts? You'd have to go back to court... and how? with no money.
It's not wage theft, it's a scheduling issue. They can claim that business is down, which is true, to quantify why we are working fewer hours. I'm simply saying the fact that it's done by a computer, not a human, means nuances are lost.
But as you indicate, this type of scheduling is done deliberately and the consequences [shorter breaks,, risk of losing health insurance] are doled out by the establishment/ company. Those consequences is not meted out by a computer. You know the saying :GI-GO. [Garbage in Garbage out] Those rules are made by humans who then put it in the computer. Like you said: It is deliberate.
In smaller outfits, Scheduling isn't always done by a computer, but I digress.
While we are on it, How would you feel about the Social Security you are accruing by working those hours?
IMHO, there should not be this Part time/ Full time dichotomy: You should be accruing benefits according to the exact number of hours worked: If you work 5 hours, you should get the 5 hours of credit for that day., If working 10, you would get the 10. If the next day you work 6 or 9, that should accrue to your benefit.
In these age of computers, that is something that would better protect the workers.
Thank you for the timely and welcome article. The only item and I may have missed it is the. Website is business centered, not customer centered. You have to search each company by name first. An employee should be able to enter their name and then search. Companies change names, hide behind other names, etc.
This DOL website is not good enough.
Thank you for bringing this to light.
Bill
Yes, I tried it. The result was the company looked up doesn't exist (not true). Which led me to surmise there's no record of them cheating employees but I do not know that for certain. Especially since they didn't rehire me after covid due to my age. A lawyer agreed based on my evidence but his partner didn't want to rake my case because there's "no money in restaurants", boy was he wrong. It's a huge restaurant group. 4 years later and my blood still boils.
Attorneys belong to the Judicial system. It is appalling that the excuse is "there is no money in restaurants". You might want to talk to the ACLU. They do a lot of stuff pro-bono.
Thank you. I appreciate that..I unfortunately deleted relevant texts....not sure I could prove anything but maybe I'll contact them.
Not rehiring you after COVID *due to your age* is yet another offense that the ACLU or a Union could help you with. If it was only spoken, you may not have a good case, but if they put it in writing, you could hand that to the ACLU.
In my School District, I was let go [temporarily] because they had financial constraints [Scott Walker, the "right to work -for less Governor we had at the time was very active in tanking Public Education].
I contacted my union and I went to the board just asking for a short letter stipulating that this 'temporary' layoff would not result in a blotch on my record. They actually wrote me a nice letter stating that I was only let go temporarily because of financial concerns but that my teaching record was great. I was getting toward the end of my career and was a bit worried that they would make that temporary layoff permanent. To their credit, they didn't, but perhaps it was because I held in my hand their judgement that I was a good teacher with great teaching qualifications.
Most teachers were re-hired that year. The Board did that a few times over several budgets. Secretly, I think it was a way to make our Union feel [we still had a Union] that we had better not make wave and accept the contract they were giving us or else. We made minimal gains those years.
Employees have to make a point of just "chewing the fat" once in a while amongst themselves, just to see where they are standing if they are not allowed to join a Union. Playing cards, having a party, this kind of thing.
I think, at least the ACLU could give you good [and free] advice on how to proceed or whether to proceed.
trickle down economy is just yellow rain... this is just so appalling
Amen
The Minnesota Reformer reports <https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/01/08/minnesota-dairy-farm-faces-3-million-wage-theft-lawsuit-involving-hundreds-of-workers/> that MN Attorney General Keith Ellison announced one of the largest wage theft suits in the state's history: the theft from hundreds of immigrant workers by Evergreen Acres Dairy. The announcement cited horrendous conditions, blatant wage theft, threats of violence, and more. From the article:
"The dairy farm, owned by Keith Schaefer and his daughter Megan Hill, regularly shaved 12 to 32 hours from each two week paycheck and did not pay overtime premiums, Ellison said. Workers also said they weren’t paid for the first two weeks they worked and never received their final paychecks.
"In an attempt to hide its violations, Evergreen Acres Dairy did not keep employment records required by law, destroyed timecards and falsified records, according to the complaint. …
"Some employees who worked 12-hour day shifts shared the same bed with others who worked 12-hour night shifts, and they had their wages automatically deducted for rent.
"Workers lived in garages, barns and other buildings unfit for human habitation. Some lived with bedrooms and bathrooms covered in mold, while others didn’t even have toilets. …
"Schaefer allegedly threatened to kill one employee and reminded the workers of a dog he recently killed while he told other employees — many of whom are undocumented immigrants — that he would call the police on them.
“'This isn’t some dystopian fiction. This isn’t ‘The Jungle’ describing the meatpacking industry 100 years ago in Chicago. This is Minnesota. This is Minnesota right now,' Ellison said."
And the dairy industry is subsidized by we the taxpayers
Business loves dereuglation. All those pesky regulations that prevent business from booming. That's what some would tell you.
But there is great value in regulating commerce and putting limits on the rapaciousness of capitalism in it's wild state.
Because in the famous words of David Bowie: "It's a criminal world."
Great reporting!
During the summers of the early 1970s, I worked in fast food, and it was a spoken understatement that you punched out at 37 hours to remain part-time (aka "no benefits") and continued working. Managers were salaried; I remember a first level manager saying he worked 108 hours in a week. Back then, there were several applicants for each job, so if you pushed back, you got fired.
"spoken understanding." Gotta love auto correct!
Thank you, Judd and Tesnim. Biden could vigorously pursue minimum wage, family leave policy, wage theft, and many other issues to win over working voters.
This is interesting timing. Last night our local Minneapolis MN News station reported that the MNAG is filing a wage theft suit against a MN dairy farm for stealing millions from workers. https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/minnesotas-attorney-general-to-announce-action-on-wage-theft-enforcement-during-monday-event/
If this amount is what is said to be owed workers, the true amount is surely much larger by omission or commission. As Lincoln commented, a mouse hole bears looking into. Repayment is not enough; prospective change is also required, but if Congress had not addressed this tip versus hourly rate in decades, it will not do so with current majority.
What a sad state of affairs we've been collectively pushed into by miscreants and MF's!
The Party of Constant criminals aka GQP (or is it QQP? Listen to Comer and you tell me) want just this. The wild wild west of capitalism all over again. Capped with the rise of the greatest snake oil salesman of all!
I got maybe another 20-25 years left at 65 so, I'll do what I can for as long as I can to hold back the hordes of maga.
Adam, I prefer ATP—American Terrorist Party—for the GOP, and despite voting for whatever Dem is running for Federal office, as a lesser of two evils, I call them ATPLite® for obvious reasons.
I'm with ya and yes, the dems ain't all they're cracked up to be. As a Black man in American and a former US Marine, I truly resent how a lot on "our" side is framed and done but...
In MY household, we DO NOT support terrorism or terroristas of ANY stripe!
This prohibition of course precludes anything with an "r" in front of it's name from entry unless it's rice, raisins, Retsina, Ricola's or something.
From a political perspective, this is a tricky fight. Republicans will perceive and twist any attack against wage theft as an attack against small business. Absolutely, government needs to take action. Just get and stay out in front of any right wing misinformation.
Thank you for this eye opening data!
This is one reason employers love immigrants. Indentured servitude is profitable
Thanks for this reporting Team PO. Unfortunately, the larger issue, that Capitalism is inherently corrupt—profit is wage theft, cannot be discussed. Capitalism is the umbrella under which Slavery, and general population control, exits. We do not need to look just at Marx-Engels for proof, Sheldon Wolin’s idea’s on “inverted totalitarianism”, and Elizabeth Anderson’s lecture series and book “Private Government” are contemporary examples showing how our economic system, Capitalism, removes any real democratic structure. Most of us work, or used to, an 8 hour day, which realistically means 10 with travel to and fro. In that ten hour shift we are governed by the rules of our employers. So, 10 plus 8, being generous, for sleep, leaves 6 hours for ourselves. Now, technological advances have furthered our submission via social control mechanisms like Facebook, Twitter, and the like. Stories abound on how employers monitor our feeds for any behavior that they may deem detrimental to the company.
Thatcher’s proclamation, “There is no alternative”, was more of a command, at best an opinion, but not fact.
Excellent points you raise John. Thank you.