I think wage theft for hourly workers is pretty cut and dry, even if, as you say, it is not enforced. That's a problem of detection and enforcement.

The same case can be made for non-exempt, salaried workers, who are still supposed to get overtime--although this may be harder to detect.

But what about salaried workers who are exempt? Although, by law, they may not be entitled to overtime, there is a tendency in this country to expect more hours from salaried, exempt workers than the other two types. Is this not a form of wage theft?

I believe this will become increasingly prevalent as more salaried workers are placed in exempt status.

It was a pleasure to meet with Kim yesterday, and I have no doubt that her experience working with some of the most vulnerable workers in the country is shockingly true. I commend her work in drawing attention to a problem that is all more acute in difficult economic times, when workers need the pay that they have earned more than ever. The most fundamental commitment that an employer makes to a worker is to regularly and predictably pay for work done at the agreed upon rate.

At Winning Workplaces we have chosen to create examples of the companies that demonstrate best practices, those organizations that not only pay their workers fairly, but also include benefits, learning opportunities, paid time off and ways to save for retirement. We do so because we believe that we can influence change by creating models that other organizations can learn from and emulate. We also point to research that validates the fact that good workplaces strengthen business. For example, in a 10-year study of 200 Fortune 500 companies regarded as having good work culture, those companies had 118% higher sales growth; 314% higher profit growth; 94% higher profit margins; 128% higher growth in earnings per share; and 116% higher total return on investment.

I believe that there is a place for both the advocate of the worker that is treated unfairly and the examples of companies that treat employees ethically and create opportunities that enrich employees’ lives.

I have spent years coordinating delinquency prevention programs, and I have learned that some of the most important factors that prevent youth from doing crime is peer and community influence; bonding with healthy leadership and having an expectation that “one way or another, I am going to make it!”

Those factors seem to also apply to your view about cultural influences about business practices of wage theft.

Actually, laws and punishment do not have much effect upon street crimes because only about 21% of REPORTED crime ever results in any kind of conviction. It’s probably worse in business crime.

I have to study this more, but I have a suspicion that a large portion of business leaders and professionals view their employees as an adversary, not as a partner that will help produce a profit. I have personally seen repeated times when executives and board members do not care if an employee gets sick or even dies just as long as the profit margin is satisfying----whatever amount that may be.

That perspective is so widespread that it has a lock on the minds of not only the executives and professionals, but the general public seems to have accepted this mind-set.

We have a lot to do to turn that community and peer mind-set around.

Bob Spencer

One of the earlier posters mentioned the Walmart wage violation suits. Because of my job, I am intimately familiar with that litigation. In the process of interviewing former and current Walmart employees during discovery in one of those suits, I kept running into several ideas that kept workers from seeking help, even when they knew that they were being cheated.

The first (and in some ways the largest) hurdle was the education level of the employees that were the most vulnerable. Most lacked even high school degrees. This meant that they were more likely to stay in a bad situation, even if they were being cheated, because they knew how hard finding another job could be, and they had no guarantee that even if they found another job the same thing wouldn't happen again. Many simply assumed that working unpaid time was the way of the world; it didn't occur to them to think otherwise because the same thing had happened to them at several consecutive jobs.

Related to the above was the problem of language. The least-educated, minimum-wage workers were often instinctively hostile to the language used in workers' rights litigation. 'Union', 'labor', 'fair wage', 'workers' rights' and other terms were viewed as related to Communism, which none of these people wanted anything to do with. Especially in the deep South (where I live), where unions have historically had a very bad time of it, it was often important to try and find new ways to talk about how their bosses were stealing from them, because the language of the laws and the language of much of the academic work on such topics only alienated the workers it was intended to help.

Also related to the education level of the workers was a pervasive distrust of the legal system in general. Sometimes it was hard to find workers, even workers who'd been cheated for years, that were willing to speak about their experiences to a lawyer or legal staff. There was a feeling that going to the courts was 'more trouble that it was worth', and I remain firmly convinced that businesses rely on this mentality to keep their wrongdoings private. If we are to see a turn-around in the prevalence of wage theft, we need to find a way to make the courts less of an adversary to be mistrusted, and more of an ally to keep cheating corporations in line and honest.

Another problem of our current system is that workers' rights class actions are enormously expensive to litigate. Very few law firms are equipped to shoulder the $3-4 MILLION per suit (and there were 63 suits filed) that cases like the Walmart action cost to bring to trial or settlement. When the civil courts are the primary way of punishing employers who consistently defraud workers (through huge class actions), such fraud will always continue to be profitable, simply because the logistical barriers to bringing these suits are staggering.

I think that tighter scrutiny by law enforcement agencies will help the problem and larger penalties will aid deterrence, but if pervasive change is to be enacted, some of the work will need to be aimed at the workers themselves.

The headline of wage thefts to me meant over paid overpaid corporate executives and board members who receive an inordinate amount of the a company’s profits. Included should also be pro athletes with 10 or 20 million dollars contracts for playing games and entertainers who do not actually contribute anything beneficial to society.