The Invisible Epidemic

More on America on the decline

Big business is happy with the transition of America - before long there will be enough poverty stricken to work their factories for cents on the dollar that they used to have to pay - and they will own not just your money but your soul.


From Crooks and Liars

When Your Boss Steals Your Wages: The Invisible Epidemic

It's an invisible epidemic -- and because people are so desperate to have and keep a job, some employers are taking full advantage of the hard economic times. Lynn Stuart Parramore at Alternet:

    Americans like to think that a fair day's work brings a fair day's pay. Cheating workers of their wages may seem like a problem of 19th-century sweatshops. But it's back and taking a terrible toll. We're talking billions of dollars in wages; millions of workers affected each year. A gigantic heist is being perpetrated against working people: they're getting screwed on overtime, denied their tips, shortchanged on benefits, defrauded on payroll, and handed paychecks that bounce like rubber balls. A conservative estimate of unpaid overtime alone shows that it costs workers at least $19 billion per year.

    The laws protecting workers are grossly inadequate, and wage thieves go unpunished. For giant companies like Walmart, Citigroup and UPS, getting fined is just the cost of doing business. You could even say that they're incentivized to cheat because punishment is so unlikely, and when it happens, so light. The protections we used to take for granted, like the right to receive at least the minimum wage, the right to workers' compensation when hurt on the job, and the right to advocate for better working conditions, are nothing more than a quaint memory for many Americans. Activist Kim Bobo, author of Wage Theft in America,calls it a "national crime wave."

    The sheer scope of the problem is jaw-dropping, sweeping across key industries and inflicting massive damage on individuals and society as a whole. In 2009, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) released a ground-breaking study, "Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers," which found that in America, an honest day's work is frequently rewarded with theft and abuse. A survey of over 4,000 workers in Chicago, L.A. and New York found that minimum and overtime violations were rife, and any attempt to complain or organize was swiftly met with punishment. Among the revelations:

        26 percent of low-wage workers got paid less than the minimum wage.

        76 percent of workers toiling over 40 hours were denied overtime.

        Workers lose an average of $2,634 a year due to these and other workplace violations.