People s World
Already battered by long shifts and high infection rates, essential workers struggling through the pandemic face another hazard of hard times: employers who steal their wages.
When a recession hits, U.S. companies are more likely to stiff their lowest-wage workers. These businesses often pay less than the minimum wage, make employees work off the clock, or refuse to pay overtime rates. In the most egregious cases, bosses don’t pay their employees at all.
Companies that hire child care workers, gas station clerks, restaurant servers, and security guards are among the businesses most likely to get caught cheating their employees, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of minimum wage and overtime violations from the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2019 alone, the agency cited about 8,500 employers for taking about $287 million from workers.
May 5, 2021
Ruth Palacios and Arturo Xelo, a married couple from Mexico, work at their fruit stand in the Corona neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York on Tuesday, April 13, 2021. They worked seven days a week for months disinfecting COVID-19 patient rooms at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, but weren t paid overtime Palacios says. The couple filed a federal lawsuit against the contractor that hired them, alleging their pay was cut without their knowledge from $15 an hour to $12.25. They re now selling fruit to make ends meet. (AP Photo/Marshall Ritzel)
NEW YORK (AP) Already battered by long shifts and high infection rates, essential workers struggling through the pandemic face another hazard of hard times: employers who steal their wages.
How companies rip off poor employees and get away with it Follow Us
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Ruth Palacios and Arturo Xelo, a married couple from Mexico, work at their fruit stand in the Corona neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York on Tuesday, April 13, 2021. They worked seven days a week for months disinfecting . more > By ALEXIA FERNÁNDEZ CAMPBELL and JOE YERARDI - Associated Press - Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Already battered by long shifts and high infection rates, essential workers struggling through the pandemic face another hazard of hard times: employers who steal their wages.
When a recession hits, U.S. companies are more likely to stiff their lowest-wage workers. These businesses often pay less than the minimum wage, make employees work off the clock, or refuse to pay overtime rates. In the most egregious cases, bosses don’t pay their employ
Wage theft: How companies rip off poor employees and get away with it
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Fidel Martinez stands for a portrait at one of his former worksites in Minneapolis on Sunday, April 18, 2021. Martinez worked for a demolition contractor in the fall of 2020, demolishing several Walgreens stores and other structures. Martinez said the contractor owed him and his co-workers more than $20,000. His boss kept telling him the money was coming, but he would get his paychecks weeks late, and many of them he didn t get at all.AP Photo/John Minchillo
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Already battered by long shifts and high infection rates, essential workers struggling through the pandemic face another hazard of hard times: employers who steal their wages.
by Alexia FernáNdez Campbell And Joe Yerardi, The Associated Press
Posted May 4, 2021 1:21 am ADT
Last Updated May 4, 2021 at 1:25 am ADT
Ruth Palacios and Arturo Xelo, a married couple from Mexico, work at their fruit stand in the Corona neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York on Tuesday, April 13, 2021. They worked seven days a week for months disinfecting COVID-19 patient rooms at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, but weren t paid overtime Palacios says. The couple filed a federal lawsuit against the contractor that hired them, alleging their pay was cut without their knowledge from $15 an hour to $12.25. They re now selling fruit to make ends meet. (AP Photo/Marshall Ritzel)