Low-Wage Workers Are Often Cheated, Study Says.

[elleng]

Low-wage workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage, according to a new study based on a survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The study, the most comprehensive examination of wage-law violations in a decade, also found that 68 percent of the workers interviewed had experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous work week. . .

The researchers said one of the most surprising findings was how successful low-wage employers were in pressuring workers not to file for workers’ compensation. Only 8 percent of those who suffered serious injuries on the job filed for compensation to pay for medical care and missed days at work stemming from those injuries.

“The conventional wisdom has been that to the extent there were violations, it was confined to a few rogue employers or to especially disadvantaged workers, like undocumented immigrants,” said Nik Theodore, an author of the study and a professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois, Chicago. “What our study shows is that this is a widespread phenomenon across the low-wage labor market in the United States.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/us/02wage.html?hp







SOME SURPRISE!

[fasttense]

1. The next time you visit a restaurant, just remember your waitress and waiter get LESS THAN MINIMUM

You bet ya. Most states allow waiters and waitresses to be paid less than the minimum wage. That way you get to pay them by giving them a tip (which the employer has to estimate and report because you can't have minimum wage workers not paying their taxes on their huge tips like the wealthy). How many times do you think your waitress or waiter got cheated out their fair wages?

[HillbillyBob]

2. Having been a waiter, bartender, electrician, dishwasher, cook

I have been cheated in all jobs over pay, overtime pay, or when I worked somewhere we're supposed to get health insurance at 90days/full time would get laid off on day 88- or cut to part time, this happened with ugly regularity.

Also you get stiffed on the meals sometimes too, a customer will leave without paying the food tab and YOU get stuck with the bill, if its a big meal it can wipe out your entire days wages and tips. Everyone likes to work for fucking free.

Not to mention how many customers act like you should be their abject slave during their visit then don't tip. You get to be their servant for an hours while they run you to the kitchen 50 times then stiff you on the meal and/or tip.

I worked on a big electrical construction project during th runnyraygun era depression, we were required to work 6 12 hr days and 10 on Sunday and get paid only for 40 hrs and that at below going wages.(you can call it a fucking recession if you want it was still a depression when there were not jobs that paid enough that I could afford a 150$ a month apartment with a roomie). A few years later I turned in the copies of my time sheets and a list of the workers to the federal wage agency and they force the company to pay us at least part of what was owed us. The real kicker was that the company was owned by Senator Starr and his family of vampires.

[northernlights]

3. I was just stiffed by my last week's pay at the sammich-factory chain

I brought in the Dept. of Labor on Monday. On the one hand, he sounded determined to follow through. On the other hand, the franchise owner knows that the Labor Dept. won't do anything that would cause the shutdown of his multiple sammich shops, cause then they'd lose all those tax revenues.

By Friday I'll know if it's time to send a letter to the corporate sammich chain-master...and make that letter public here on DU. :evilgrin:

[elleng]

4. Secy of Labor said to hire more 'checkers,'

so write to her if no action.

Good luck!