Urban American Workers Being Cheated Of Their Full Wages...Federal Enforcement Is Needed!

NY Times----

(Is your Employer ripping you off?)



Workers in America, Cheated


An important new study has cast an appalling light on a place where workplace laws fail to protect workers, where wages and tips are routinely stolen, where having to work sick, injured or off the clock is the price of having a job.

The place is the United States, all across the lower strata of the urban economy.

The most comprehensive investigation of labor-law violations in years, released Wednesday by the Center for Urban Economic Development, the National Employment Law Project and the U.C.L.A. Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, surveyed 4,387 workers in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

Its researchers sought out people often missed by standard surveys and found abuses everywhere: in factories, grocery stores, retail shops, construction sites, offices, warehouses and private homes. The word sweatshop clearly is not big enough anymore to capture the extent and severity of the rot in the low-wage workplace.

Workers told of employers who ignored the minimum wage, denied overtime, took illegal deductions to pay for tools or transportation, or forced them to work unpaid before or after their shifts. More than two-thirds of them had endured at least one wage violation in the previous workweek. More than a quarter had been paid less than the minimum wage, often by more than $1 an hour. Violations typically robbed workers of $51 a week, from an average paycheck of $339.

The report paints an acute picture of powerlessness. Of workers who had been seriously injured on the job, only 8 percent had filed for workers’ compensation — a symptom, researchers said, of the power of employer pressure. Although 86 percent of respondents had worked enough consecutive hours to be entitled to time off for meals, more than two-thirds had had their breaks denied, interrupted or shortened. Workers who complained to bosses or government agencies or tried to form unions suffered illegal retaliation: firing, suspension, pay cuts or threats to call immigration authorities.

It is, of course, morally abhorrent that the American economy should be so riddled with exploitation. But it is also powerfully evident that there are practical consequences when the powerless are abused. Low-wage workers spend a high proportion of their income on necessities; when their paychecks are systematically bled by greedy employers, an entire community’s economic vitality is sapped as well.

The answers are basic, though too long ignored. Government needs to send more investigators to back rooms, offices and factory floors, and to enlist labor organizations and immigrant-rights groups as their investigative eyes and ears. Penalties for Wage-Law Violations need toughening. Employees who have historically been denied basic Labor Rights — domestic workers and home health aides — need to finally be given the protection of wage-and-hour laws. Companies must not be allowed to skirt their legal obligations by outsourcing hiring to subcontractors, letting others break the law for them.

The report has particular significance for immigrant workers, who made up 70 percent of the survey (39 percent of them were undocumented). Workplace abuses are flourishing in the absence of a working immigration system, where illegal immigrants are vital to the economy but helpless to assert their rights.

The report upends the argument that the way to help American workers is to make illegal immigrants ever more frightened and exploitable. Only by protecting all workers will the country begin to rebuild a workplace matching its ideals of decency and fair play.



Street-Level Groups Enlisted to Report Labor Violations

To crack down on businesses that pay less than the minimum wage, fail to pay overtime or to pay wages altogether, steal tips or commit other labor violations, the New York State Department of Labor is starting an experimental program that will rely on community organizations to monitor compliance with labor laws.

In an announcement, the state labor commissioner, M. Patricia Smith, called the program, the New York Wage Watch, a “one-of-a-kind grassroots tool in the fight against illegal labor practices.”

The six-month pilot will begin with six participants: the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association, which will focus on Chinatown, Flushing and parts of Long Island; Make the Road New York, which will focus on Bushwick; the Workplace Project, based on Long Island; the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which will look at high-end supermarkets; the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which will focus on retail stores in Lower Manhattan, Bushwick, the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx and parts of Queens; and the Centro del Inmigrante, based on Staten Island.

The six groups will conduct know-your-rights training, providing employers with information about compliance and distributing brochures to workers in supermarkets, laundromats, nail salons, day-labor sites and other work areas. They will have a designated contact in the US Labor Department’s Division of Labor Standards which enforces wage and hour laws, to whom they can refer violations or questions.

The department is to provide training and materials to the groups starting on Feb. 7.

After the first experiment in New York City and on Long Island, the Labor Department will seek additional groups for the program. The groups must be nongovernmental and nonprofit, and can include religious organizations, student groups, labor unions, business associations or neighborhood groups.

Ms. Smith said the program was loosely based on the Neighborhood Watch programs that began in Queens in the 1960s. In December 2007, she said, the Labor Department investigated a commercial strip in Bushwick. Two of the six groups now taking part in the pilot project — Make the Road New York and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union — maintained a presence in the Bushwick area, staying in touch with workers and employers, and the number of labor-law violations went down, Ms. Smith said.

The Labor Department has documented numerous labor-law violations at a variety of workplaces in recent years, from restaurants and car washes to sites like the Saratoga Race Course and the Erie County Fair.

Amy Carroll, a supervising lawyer at Make the Road New York, said, “The Department of Labor can’t be in every nook and cranny of the city and the state all the time. We want employers to know there are costs for violating the law. They can’t get away with it.”



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Sources: NY Times, Chicago Suntimes, Whitehouse.gov, US Dept of Labor, OSHA, Charlotte Observer, News & Observer, WRAL, Ultimate Wealth, Milwaukee World, Youtube, Google Maps