The Very Real Scourge of Wage Theft

In our modern society the majority of the people sale their time to employers to make their living. But many employers want to cut corners and their employees wages by bullying them out of those wages they have earned.

I remember 35 yrs ago working my first job in fast foods sometimes working 60+ hours a week, but my two week pay period was always manipulated to less than 80 hours so the company never paid any overtime. As a worker I see it as good these wage thieves are finally having to follow the rules and pay their employees the money they have earned.

Last week, the owner of a chain of Papa John’s was ordered to pay $800,000 in back pay to workers he’d shortchanged by rounding down to the nearest hour on their time cards and failing to pay overtime properly. “I didn’t realize if you work 10 hours per day, you are supposed to pay overtime for two hours,” the owner, Emmanuel Onuaguluchi, told the New York Post.

By law, companies have to pay their employees minimum wage, and overtime pay should kick in once an employee works past an eight-hour shift in a day. Five years ago, in a survey funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and conducted by researchers from the National Employment Law Project, UCLA, Cornell University, and the University of Illinois, Chicago, a quarter of low-wage employees reported they hadn’t been paid the minimum wage in the prior week, and three-quarters said they were denied overtime.

source

Work, it's all about time!

I need to go back and sue my former company then.

We never got OT for over 8/day. Only paid it for over 40hrs/week.

It was pharmaceuticals too, not like they couldn't afford it.

Very uncool.

Let's be honest here, dishonesty isn't restricted to any economic 'class'. Stealing hours by employees isn't 'unheard'
of either.

Oh I'm sick today, oh I need a family day....to name of few that are abused by some....Some, not all. Same as employers.

And not long ago, Republicans were expressing joyful interest in eliminating overtime pay for American workers. Why? To help their bribing corporate/big-business types, thats why.

They also shown serious interest in eliminating minumum wage, social security, workers rights, safety measures on the job, reducing sick/personal time, and giving employers way too many freedoms to eliminate safe-guards and options that can result in disaster to the average American worker who lives pay check to pay check. All while trying to kick them on the ground while they are already beaten down with wages that stay the same or decrease over the decades, while the prices of neccestities in life sky-rocket.

But like recent claims, the Republicans are the "party of the people", right??

(And save the Leftist/Liberal accusation nonsense, I am truly center and equally agravated by the Right and the Left. I am about RIGHT and WRONG, not about Left or Right.)

It is about time, but if no one was willing to work under those conditions, then employers would have no employees.

The answer is not to try to force employers through law, but let things settle and try to figure out why things are happening. It isn't always so simple as "Company A is greedy and exploitative." Sometimes, there are other pressures in the system that no one wants to acknowledge because to do so would mean to admit that we have often created our own problems.

See Obamacare and the recent sudden shift of many employees to 30 hour weeks.

originally posted by: nwtrucker
Very uncool.

Let's be honest here, dishonesty isn't restricted to any economic 'class'. Stealing hours by employees isn't 'unheard'
of either.

Oh I'm sick today, oh I need a family day....to name of few that are abused by some....Some, not all. Same as employers.

Its a good thing you probably have paid sick days available to you to be able to rest and not work due to your illness today, eh? The Republicans you tend to cheerlead have expressed issue with such an option for American workers. Why?

(And save the Leftist/Liberal accusation nonsense, I am truly center and equally agravated by the Right and the Left. I am about RIGHT and WRONG, not about Left or Right.)

a reply to: nwtrucker

The games that were played at our plant, by hourly and management alike, were EPIC.

I swear, the amount of effort put into NOT working looked more draining than just doing the ####### job.

When I first started I had people pissed at me because I worked TOO much. They would tell me I was making them look bad. EXCUSE ME? I'm sorry, that was just how I was raised, and I found time passed faster when I was doing my job.

It took about 1 1/2 years till I burned out, or wised up. Finally got tired of doing everyone elses work. They would stand around and wait for me to do it because they knew I would. Then they would laugh in my face about it.

Odd thing is the managers perpetuated this madness, the more you did the more that was expected, if you were known to do nothing, nothing was expected.

I finally gave up and did as little as possible. Hide when the boss was coming, push a cart around ALL shift, hang in the plant managers office with the rest of the brown nosers. It was pathetic but in order to stay sane it was adapt or go crazy. That place ruined my work ethic.
Big business is such a HUGE dysfunctional joke.

And we made injectables like chemo drugs and antibiotics. Scary.

One of the biggest realizations I had as a laborer was that "I am in the business of me." Meaning, I started viewing myself as an independent contractor, selling my ability to do labor. It was state of mind, nothing formal. It was in my best interest to do the best job I could possibly do, to be efficient and save the company money, to always be professional, on-time. etc.; yet it was also good for my "brand", so to speak, to not allow myself to get screwed over.

I had a job once that never paid over time, and you only worked 80hrs in a two-weeks period. There was one time I had pulled about 65hrs on week one, and early on the third day of week two I hit the 80hrs ceiling. We were extremely busy, but I left anyway. When asked where I was going, I said home because I had hit my 80hrs. It got really tiresome month-in and month-out to be worked to death one week, only to be sent home early the next so they could skimp out on paying overtime.

No words were exchanged about the incident- they knew full well what my point was and subsequently started paying for anything over 40 in a week and stopped sending us home once we hit 80. Walking out was certainly a risk, but it payed off. Sometimes workers need to flex the only muscle they have....

a reply to: stosh64

This attitude is rampant in the union workers my husband's company contracts with. Once, one of the owners of the entire company was touring and actually walked in on a union guy sleeping on the job. The owner rightfully demanded right there that the be fired. Due to union rules and protections ... they couldn't do it even though they wanted to.

There is a tradition that every year the company and the union give and take. One year the union makes concessions and the next, it's the company's turn. One year, the union decided they weren't going to uphold the gentleman's agreement and make their concessions on their year to do so. The company stuck to its guns and there was a brief labor walk out of a week.

The company people went into overdrive and out-produced the union even though many of them had not stood on the line for years. Many were desk and lab jockey Ph.D. types and they significantly outworked the union. The company kept the numbers and now when the union makes noises about scrapping the gentleman's agreement, those numbers come out.

a reply to: nwtrucker

Those of us not born with a silver spoon in their mouths work for a living. If you want to work for free I can find 60 to 150 hours of work each week you can do for me!

Stealing employees wages could be another reason we have so many people going onto the welfare roles!

The funny thing is when I made over $20 bucks an hour I got my overtime, when I was being paid lower wages I saw wage theft regularly. At one point I had to file a complaint as my employer was not allowing any breaks and we were working 12 hour days! We were told to eat our meals while we drove forklifts. For years the company added 30 minutes to our pay for not having a lunch break, then they said no breaks and no to the extra half hour of pay. L & I told them all breaks were to be given to the employees with no exceptions.

NW how would you feel if you miles were being shorted every time you turned them in. How would you feel if you employer was to say we think you could have taken a shorter route so your 1.200 miles was cut to 800, and did this every pay period?

I have worked for several people/businesses that routinely and knowingly screwed their employees. Not just out of overtime but out of normal hours worked as well.
In the restaurant business you get double screwed more often than not.
No matter what happens, restaurants usually find a way to make sure you never get any kind of paycheck (free employees are great,huh?) plus dig into your tip money to pay other employees. (wow, not only free employees, but employees who have to kick in on labor cost !)
Places routinely refuse to pay overtime for less than 80 hrs in two weeks.
If you do get the board of labor to intervene (the OP being a rare exception) the business gets a slap on the wrist and you recover a fraction of what was stolen and probably get fired as well.
What a perfect set up, I as an employer know that I pay you way too little to hire an attorney so I can pretty much do whatever I want.
These people need jail time.

a reply to: AlaskanDad

No one is saying there isn't dishonesty in some companies. I worked briefly for an inventory company that skimped its workers. The key is that I said briefly. They were cheating me, so I got out as soon as I could.

However, what a lot of people are pointing out is that the problem of cheating and dishonesty is hardly confined to management. There is plenty of dishonesty and poor work ethic going on in the employee ranks, too, and there are often labor laws a plenty that protect them in their bad behavior.

a reply to: ketsuko

Quote = ketsuko
This attitude is rampant in the union workers my husband's company contracts with. Once, one of the owners of the entire company was touring and actually walked in on a union guy sleeping on the job. The owner rightfully demanded right there that the be fired. Due to union rules and protections ... they couldn't do it even though they wanted to.

Interesting!

I have seen more times than not union employers ask for a worker to do a temporary job so if they get a bad worker they can say the work had ended. Those of us that worked hard got our work extended and quite often ended up with a long term job.

originally posted by: ketsuko
It is about time, but if no one was willing to work under those conditions, then employers would have no employees.

The answer is not to try to force employers through law, but let things settle and try to figure out why things are happening. It isn't always so simple as "Company A is greedy and exploitative." Sometimes, there are other pressures in the system that no one wants to acknowledge because to do so would mean to admit that we have often created our own problems.

See Obamacare and the recent sudden shift of many employees to 30 hour weeks.

Yes " let things settle" while people starve and die from unsafe conditions.

"The market will fix the problem" as the american workers won't work there but the millions of illegals allowed in each will.

The market principle is broken and long gone.

It has not existed for the actual average worker in america for decades.

If the the " they will pay more because nobody will work there if they don't " principle can work....millions of illegals can't be allowed to enter the work force.

It destroys the entire concept.

The market doesn't work when the simple principles it is founded on are undermined on a constant basis against the worker.

Your entire point and argument are crap....come back with actual real world info not pipe dreams and we can hash something out.

Otherwise stop sucking the 1% teet and raly for the real workers who are getting screwed and starved to death daily in this bs rigged economy.

a reply to: infinityorder

Illegal immigration is its own problem. I am against it, but you should have picked that up by now.

Yes, the market principle is broken because the market is no longer free. Too many people have been busy screaming "There oughtta be a law!" Present company in this thread included. Now we have created our own problems. This is what I mean about seeing where the problems are before we pass more laws to create problems created by laws we passed. Or did you misunderstand my reference about Obamacare?

The thing you miss is that nothing happens in a vacuum. You cannot pass a law and say, "I am passing a law to address problem A and the effect will simply be B." What happens is because you tinker with A and B, you also cause ripple effects throughout the entire structure like a stone dropped in a pond. You have to anticipate C, D, E, F, and so on down the road. Failure to do so or even acknowledge the possibility with the passages of Obamacare has led us to the current part-time hell most of the nation, myself included, is stuck in.

And when C, D, E, F and so on do happen, as they inevitably do, the temptation (especially with politicians) is to call this a new and entirely unrelated problem to anything that happened before. And this new problem needs its own law to fix it.

And we repeat this cycle I described above.

Pretty soon, or now if you will, the entire economy is FUBAR, and you have people claiming that free markets don't work when it's been so long since we've actually HAD one that they wouldn't know it even if it bit them in the collective rear end.

That was my last job, they constantly screwed me on over time based on the two week pay schedule. Basically I was doing most of the work too. I did really well at my job, but never got credit. I'm sure they will never get someone to do it as well as I did either.

It wasn't until I left and they only had one loyal employee left, did he actually get overtime pay. The new guys couldn't take it and left the job within a week. In spite of the fact that the boss probably believed there was an endless supply of people to fill the job, they couldn't get anyone in after that, so the only guy had to work OT. The manager was never there either, and until the other workers got together after I left (against the non-union type rules they had) and complained together to the boss man, she never got in trouble until that time. I hope they got rid of that lazy fat cow.

I have lived this story (for 5 years!) just like you guys have been telling it.

a reply to: ketsuko

anyone have workmens comp taken out of their paycheck??? never assume anything...I know someone who worked for a company, they send him to different companies to do the work...workmens comp taken out of each of his checks...one day while on the job, he was in a horrible accident.

turned out, they were taking out the workmens comp out but never enrolled him, they kept the money.

a reply to: research100

Yeah, that is another thing about that last job. They took out unemployment (a small amount, but it was on the pay stub) however, it was seasonal and we weren't entitled to unemployment. Man, I'm glad I don't work there any more. It was a lesson for the next pee-on job I take.

ETA: My advice is always know your rights as a worker, only put about 70% effort into your job (do a good job though) because they will still want more, and don't be afraid to blow the whistle if you know they are breaking the laws (or use it on them for blackmail). Also, never do them any favors either, and don't get personally involved with anyone at work as they will stab you in the back, just to look good.

I have never worked at a place that paid overtime until you hit your 40 hour work week.

If the cost of health insurance wasn't rising so fast, the employers could pay more. This wouldn't count for places like Papa Johns though, I doubt if they actually pay for health insurance.

I'm thinking they made that rule at Papa Johns because employees were coming in late or wanted to leave fifteen minutes early at the end of their shift a lot. This way they are penalized for not being there when they are scheduled. There are many places that dock time if you are late in the morning. If you wait and are an hour late, they send you home because a replacement was called.