Wage Theft: a Multi-Billion-Dollar-A-Year Industry

We've all experienced and/or heard about these petty sleazy tactics:

A supervisor tells a subordinate “Hey, before you clock in, you wanna grab one end of that crate?”

An employee is given an ironclad deadline to finish a project, and the employee doesn't have enough scheduled hours to possibly meet this deadline.  The worker can either be disciplined for failing to meet the deadline, OR he/she can meet the deadline by working some unpaid overtime.

Employees are required to wear a uniform.  These uniforms are not provided by the employer.

These are three examples of wage theft.  According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), low-wage workers in the U.S. are being robbed of $50 billion a year by unscrupulous employers.  That was not a typo.  $50 billion every year — stolen from those who can least afford it.

The three above examples of wage theft are all illegal under the Federal Labor Standards Act.  Some states and cities are trying to provide stricter enforcement of the Federal Labor Standards Act by giving more resources to investigators and making it easier for workers to file their complaints.

The EPI wants to provide stricter enforcement at the federal level, but that seems unlikely at the moment.

Jobs, Stupid!

Later this week, Obama is expected to take a short break from playing Hamster-In-A-Treadmill with his health reform battle. There’s another even more urgent fire that needs to be put out — the 10% Plus (and climbing) unemployment rate.

There’ll be a jobs forum at the White House this Thursday. People taking part in the forum include: Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Disney CEO Bob Iger, economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman and various labor leaders.

Let’s hope he listens to Paul Krugman in particular. His November 29th column has some good advice for Obama.

He says Obama needs to create an “emergency jobs program.” Instead of passing another gargantuan stimulus package and then waiting and waiting for something to trickle down, Obama needs a “somewhat cheaper program that generates more jobs for the buck.”

Federal aid to state and local governments should accomplish this. At the very least it would prevent vital services — and jobs — from being eliminated. He also should create a smaller-scale version of FDR’s Works Progress Administration (WPA). This would create a lot of jobs (even if they’re low-paying) at relatively low cost. According to the Economic Policy Institute, spending $40 billion a year for three years would create a million jobs.

The Economic Policy Institute also recommends a tax credit for employers who increase their payrolls.

His column ends with “Yes, we can create more jobs — and yes, we should.”

Obama is in a tough position. The Right hates him because he’s just seconds away from imposing a Socialist Communist Fascist police state on this once-free nation. And the Left hates him because he hasn’t done jack shit.

In a related story, forty percent of Democrats say they aren’t going to bother voting in the 2010 election. Democratic political leaders are still a lot more popular with the public than their Republican counterparts. But with Republican voters three times more likely than Democrats to vote next year — things could get interesting.

But there’s still hope. Maybe the Republican Purity Test will get those moderate centrist RINOs out of their “big tent” once and for all. Get that spineless pussy Newt Gingrich out of the party and replace him with a Real American. Republican voters: if the Republican candidate isn't far enough to the Right for you, vote for a third party candidate. That'll show 'em!