Media clips
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Wage Theft Is Costing Workers $50 Billion a Year in Stolen Pay
In These Times/Eli Horowitz
Wage theft—any refusal to pay wages, benefits, tips or overtime—is epidemic in New York and the United States. Approximately $50 billion in wages are stolen every year from workers nationwide, according to a 2014 Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report. In 2012, federal and state departments of labor and lawyers recovered at least $933 million in wages, which is less than 2 percent of the amount estimated stolen. According to EPI researchers and community organizers, when workers report wage theft to government agencies and lawyers, cases are routinely dismissed or settled for unsatisfactory amounts. Additionally, many victims are afraid to speak up for fear of losing their jobs, revealing their status as undocumented or because they can’t afford legal costs and time. Even when victims do win judgments in court, owners often claim they lack the assets to pay. Because wage theft lawsuits are typically civil cases, guilty bosses rarely face the threat of jail time.
In These Times May 12, 2017 -
Labor unions and worker advocates have embraced the new standard, saying it gives workers a real voice at the bargaining table by allowing them to negotiate with the employers who actually set the terms of their employment. Celine McNicholas, a former Obama administration NLRB official, told Bloomberg BNA that’s especially important in situations in which businesses use complicated legal arrangements to veil the power they wield over workplace policies. “When I look at this incredible amount of political capital that is being spent on this fight, what I see is an attack on workers’ ability to unionize,” McNicholas, now labor counsel for the union-backed Economic Policy Institute, said. “If you want to meaningfully bargain, you need to have everybody at the table on the employer side, otherwise you’re never going to be able to actually impact the terms and conditions of employment.” … EPI’s McNicholas said employees deserve some clarity too. She said she’d like to see a variety of labor and employment laws updated to ensure that workers have a meaningful right to negotiate and take legal action when necessary. “If you could have standards under all of these laws that actually were meaningful for workers to exercise their rights, that would be wonderful,” she said.
Bloomberg BNA May 12, 2017 -
A 2017 review from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute came to a similar conclusion. Martin Carnoy of Stanford University writes, “extensive research on educational vouchers in the United States over the past 25 years shows that gains in student achievement are at best small.”
NPR May 12, 2017 -
Women tend to earn more than men when first out of college. But once they have kids, the typical mom earns less than similarly educated men and other women who don’t have kids, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Moms are also relegated to handling a disproportionate share of the household chores, which eats into the time they can spend at work and puts them at a disadvantage in high-wage, high-pressure jobs that demand long work weeks, the EPI study says.
CBS Moneywatch May 12, 2017 -
In Ohio, 5.5 percent of workers experienced this type of “wage theft,” according to the analysis released Wednesday by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Ohio’s current minimum wage is $8.15 an hour. In the 10 most-populous states that were the subject of EPI’s report, employers failed to pay the minimum wage to an average of 4.1 percent of workers. Florida ranked first with 7.3 percent and New York came in third at 5 percent. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that on the pay stub it says you’re only getting $4 an hour,” said David Cooper, the senior economic analyst, who co-authored the report with research assistant Teresa Kroeger.
The Plain Dealer May 11, 2017 -
In many low-wage industries, it’s all too easy for employers to short workers on the wages they’re owed — either because it’s done in a way that employees don’t notice, or they need the job too much to protest. How much this costs workers is difficult to pinpoint. But by one estimation, they lose out by more than workers in any of the 10 largest states, according to a new report from the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. To put numbers on the phenomenon of “wage theft” — a broad term for practices such as not paying proper overtime, requiring work off the clock, denying legally required meal breaks, and misclassifying workers as independent contractors — the left-leaning think tank looked at data from a monthly Census Bureau survey that asks people how much houstomoney they make. (whole story)
Houston Chronicle May 11, 2017 -
New Study Warns of Wage Theft in US
Voice of America/Jim Randle
The Economic Policy Institute says the wage theft hits nearly one-fifth of low wage workers in the 10 largest U.S. states. The study’s authors say affected workers lose an average of $64 a week, or $3,300 a year out of their modest salaries. Young people, women, minorities and immigrants are often stuck in low-level jobs and thus are most likely to be affected by wage theft. EPI says the shortfall obviously hurts workers, but also slows demand for goods and services, which can crimp economic growth.
Voice of America May 11, 2017 -
“This is evidence of the last hired, first fired phenomenon,” said Valerie Wilson, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC. “As the recovery continues on you start to see the biggest improvements for the groups that were hit the hardest.”
Bloomberg May 11, 2017 -
The Lonely Women of the Rust Belt
City Lab/Alana Semuels
Indeed, the decline of men is not affecting all parts of the white community; highly educated workers, both men and women, are doing just fine economically. According to the Economic Policy Institute, white men in the top 20 percent of income-earners are actually working 4 percent more than they did in 1979; men in the bottom two income quintiles are working fewer hours than they did in 1979. (Women in all income quintiles are working more.) These educated workers are clustered in big cities, where good jobs are relatively abundant. In the areas where there are shrinking opportunities for people without a college education, men are dropping out of the workforce and women are left to carry them or live without them.
CityLab May 11, 2017 -
In the ten most populous states in the country, employers steal $8 billion a year from their employees simply by paying them less than the legally mandated minimum wage, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). For the 2.4 million workers who are affected — 17 percent of the low-wage workforce — that amounts to an average loss of $64 a week. Given that they’re making just over $200 a week, on average, they miss out on nearly a quarter of their earnings. (whole story)
Think Progress May 10, 2017