Comments

1
I see some of the worst abuses in mid level jobs. People can be desperate to keep what little success they have.
2
Wage theft? Really? From the description in the clipping that doesn't sound like wage theft to me. Can I call it wage theft if I don't get a promotion because my employer decides they don't need anyone at the next pay/responsibility level up above me?
3
Collusion and wage-fixing are seriously bad, but wage theft is something different.

Wage theft is when you force your white-collar workers, workers with no supervisory duties, like drudge coders who don't even control their own work-flow, to work 60 to 90 hours per week for their base salary, with no overtime pay or compensatory time off. That's wage theft.

State labor laws require overtime pay for hourly workers. Not just additional hours of pay, but 50% and 100% premiums over certain numbers of hours worked. Companies avoid this by giving non-supervisory employees titles like "software engineer," making them "exempt" from overtime pay.

It would be one thing if these extra hours were worked voluntarily, but IT departments pit workers against each other and use their review processes as a bludgeon to force unpaid overtime to be a regular and necessary condition of employment.
4
A bunch of six figure income software engineers are crying wage theft because they think they've lost out on theoretical income they might have been paid elsewhere? Seriously??? That the Stranger would even equate this with wage theft is just sad.
5
wage theft is a competitive sport in architecture. interns working 5 weeks of overtime in 8 weeks, then taking 1 week off. professional martyrdom.
6
Wage Cops!! Yay
7
The stranger should really cover what's happening in the Seattle real estate market with forgien money. I started house hunted a couple weeks ago and the agents I've talk to said the market is going crazy becwthe Chinese money that was being spent in the Vancouver market is now moved here. If you look at the Vancouver (or even Toronto) market, Chinese money made the market hard for anyone else t buy a house and pushed house prices up.extremely high. Canada finally got wise and changed its investor Visa program. Now those buyers are looking south to Seattle. Please please do a.post/story about this, anyone who's seen the damage this has caused to the Vancouver house market (where its impossible to get anything) should be worried. This is extremely important to the income inequality discussion and council should be aware of it.
8
@6: Most people just call them cops. You know, the guys who investigate all crimes.

It is not the employee's fault that so many employers are thieving scumbags. Maybe if so many real live employers where not illegally leeching wages from their workers it would not need so much policing.
9
Shit, when you torrent a fucking movie these asshole corporations are the first to accuse you of "theft" but when you walk off with $3 billion in workers' money, then we must bicker over the semantics of "theft".
10
When an employee embezzles petty cash from the company they work for, it's considered a crime and if the total adds up to a certain amount they can be sent to prison for it. Wage theft should be no different. But I've never heard of a manager or business owner going to prison for fudging their underlings' time cards or coercing them to work extra hours off the clock, even when the theft is widespread and systematic and adds up to tens of thousands of dollars or more. We live in a country where it's considered socially and legally acceptable for bosses to steal from their workers without consequences. Freedom!
11
@6

You know, when you keep the minimum wage simple, as Washington has enjoyed for the last 26 years, you don't need a special bureau to conduct employer surveillance and figure out how to prosecute wage theft, or calculate how much health insurance is really worth or who got what tips on what night. When it's as simple as X hours times Y wage, the cops can do the job.

I certainly wouldn't want to make wages drastically more complex until we first got a handle on wage theft under the simplest possible system, which we already have.
12
My favorite one is "policies" about PTO expiring, or becoming in accessible when you leave employment. If PTO is part of your existing compensation it like your paycheck shouldn't expire, or disappear because of a status change.
13
It's weird how one thread everyone's like "the cops are broken" and then the next everyone's like "send this problem to the cops, they'll investigate it and prosecute". You know that all the institutions are already infected with the morals of patriarchal white supremacist capitalism, right? They're not going to investigate some wage theft case where the "criminal" isn't even part of the recognised criminal classes.
14
@7 I hate the singling out of the "Chinese" that might bring up some nasty racial animus, but I think the purchasing of large amounts of property by the rich, both domestic in the form of big banks and by foreign millionaires is a troubling event that is destroying the urban housing market. If they don't purchase it as a pied-à-terre, they rent it out, removing housing stock from those of us fortunate enough to be in a position to purchase a house.
15
This isn't exactly wage theft, but in many ways it is worse. It locks workers into one company or the other preventing them from being able to advance by moving to where there skills are most needed. The companies can then let wages stagnate because they know that there is no competitive job market for their current employees.
16
@3 Has it down pat. Wage theft is happening among white mid-level jobs, especially among tech and creatives (coders and graphic artists get hammered the worst).

But, this isn't wage theft. It's wage fixing and collusion. Please don't conflate the two very serious issues.
17
"It is not the employee's fault that so many employers are thieving scumbags. Maybe if so many real live employers where not illegally leeching wages from their workers it would not need so much policing"-Gorath

Who are these small business employers you speak of? Names?
I actually agree with Ctulu on something.. amazing isnt it. Minimum wage if implemented should have no exceptions. "Call it misery loves company" or "playing fair". The rise of Wage Cops is the last thing taxpayers need to fund.

18
@17,

How do you propose enforcing the minimum wage then? Wage theft happens frequently, a multistate class action was filed a little over a month ago against McDonald's and several of its franchisees. Do you propose just leaving it up to the courts? You do realize that that isn't effective. Since the minimum wage is so low, any given employee being cheated out of, say, five hours is losing all of $35. That's not enough to justify going to court, which means that the vast majority of employees who have been robbed by their employers have no recourse.

So what's your solution? Other than letting employers commit theft without repercussions?
19
@17

I have no objection to you guys trying to win a vote in Seattle, of all places, with a teabaggy slogan like "Wage Cops". Maybe put a picture of Sarah Palin on your posters. And a a bald eagle shedding a tear. Godspeed to your, sir.
20
What are you talking about. Your an enigma. For it but against it but then for more govt. but then against it. Teaparty huh? You have completely misdiagnosed my political leanings and other business owners in Seattle.

I think the idea that you can have any discourse with ideologues is a farce. You lack wisdom and reason.. both attributes that are needed to help both those in poverty and small business in Seattle. Fact is that I am not opposed to a MW increase but listening to your venom and bias is the reason I simply cannot let nutjobs like Cthulu ruin good business and hurt the poor. Now carry on with the Ivars poll, relocate to Boise and contempt of workers bs all while shopping at Amazon.
21
@20

I get that you think you're a real progressive dude. I get that guys like Meinert and Douglas and Freidman and Keck think they're real progressive too. At least Linda Derschang has the self-knowledge to realize she thinks Ayn Rand is a genius.

Whatever. Please do continue to denigrate efforts to protect people living on the edge of survival from having what little money they earn stolen by their own employer as "Wage Cops". I love it. It does such a beautiful job of showing the world how deluded you are, and what a low opinion you have of minimum wage workers. You think they're lazy and self-entitled, and you think they're lucky to have generous "job creators" around to give them a living. You're offended that anyone would dare consider slapping handcuffs on a "job creator" for theft of wages. You think anybody whose job it is to investigate such thefts is a joke.

That's who you are. Please get out there with your OneSeattle and your Tips Are Wages astroturf front groups and try to convince Seattle that you're a progressive. Please be my guest. More power to you.

I'm laughing in your face at the hypocrisy. But you don't care what I think right? So godspeed to you. Go get 'em tiger.
22
Every employer I have ever worked for had some scheme to swindle their employees out of their pay. Every. Single. One. So has everyone else's. The only difference is that I am aware I'm getting screwed over and how while you probably are not.
23
@18 keshmeshi Point well taken. I am a lawyer who represents low wage workers and does take these small wage claims. An attorney can generally take small dollar cases and if successful, the opposing party will pay attorney's fees. However, as a practical matter, employees are often timid about pursuing a lawsuit against their employer while working. Employees fear they may be fired in retaliation. Retaliation is illegal, however it can be hard to convince an employee they will be protected for asserting their rights when they are relying on a weekly paycheck.

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