Wage theft from employees a national concern

Saturday, July 28th, 2012   Posted in Uncategorized

The problem of wage theft — employers who don’t pay their workers federal minimum wage or for overtime — mostly hits the ranks of lower-income workers.

This issue has particularly affected restaurant workers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, which stepped up enforcement about two years ago, adding 200 more agents to handle the issue.

“Earnings in the restaurant industry have also lagged behind that of the entire private sector,” according to a book, “Behind the Kitchen Door: Pervasive Inequality in New York City’s Thriving Restaurant Industry.” “In terms of annual earnings, restaurant workers on average made only $19,632 in 2000, compared to $46,654 in the private sector, a gap which increased by 17 percent since 1990,” the book states.

Most of the workers surveyed for the book — 59 percent — had experienced overtime violations and 13 percent reported minimum wage violations.

Some of these abuses have ended up in court, with restaurant owners owing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the workers. Some of these cases include, according to various news releases and published articles:

• A U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif. ruled in March against Crazy Buffet Chinese restaurant, awarding 32 employees a total of $201,950 in back pay and an equal amount in liquidated damages. The owner falsified records of

Wage Theft in Georgia

Saturday, February 19th, 2011   Posted in Uncategorized

In part 2 of their investigation which we told you about last week, Randy Travis, a reporter with Fox 5 in Atlanta, follows the money on the use of undocumented workers.  In this case, 50 bricklayers from Mexico were employed to work on two school sites and the Gainesville, GA police department headquarters, but were not paid for the work by the subcontractor Surig & Sons who hired them to do the work. According to the video, even though the masons provided false papers, they were allowed to work on the projects and then were not fully paid by the company for the work that they performed.  Surig and Son owe workers $107,704 for the three projects.  That is wage theft and it is illegal in over 30 states….

I-Team: Hiring Illegal Immigrants Pt. 2: MyFoxATLANTA.com

http://www.constructioncitizen.com/blog/illegal-worker-wage-theft-georgia-surig-and-sons/1102191