How is it that employees are arrested for stealing from companies, but...

[JHB]

...companies and their officers don't get arrested for stealing from employees?

Officials at Toys "R" Us, Family Dollar, Pep Boys, Wal-Mart and Taco Bell say they prohibit manipulation of time records, but many acknowledge that it sometimes happens. "Our policy is to pay hourly associates for every minute they work," said Mona Williams, vice president for communications at Wal-Mart. "With a company this large, there will inevitably be instances of managers doing the wrong thing. Our policy is if a manager deliberately deletes time, they're dismissed."

Compensation experts say that many managers, whether at discount stores or fast-food restaurants, fear losing their jobs if they fail to keep costs down. "A lot of this is that district managers might fire you as soon as look at you," said William Rutzick, a lawyer who reached a $1.5 million settlement with Taco Bell last year after a jury found the chain's managers guilty of erasing time and requiring off-the-clock work. "The store managers have a toehold in the lower middle class. They're being paid $20,000, $30,000. They're in management. They get medical. They have no job security at all, and they want to keep their toehold in the lower middle class, and they'll often do whatever is necessary to do it."

Another reason managers shave time, experts say, is that an increasing part of their compensation comes in bonuses based on minimizing costs or maximizing profits. "The pressures are just unbelievable to control costs and improve productivity," said George Milkovich, a longtime Cornell University professor of industrial relations and co-author of the leading textbook on compensation. "All this manipulation of payroll may be the unintended consequence of increasing the emphasis on bonuses."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/04/national/04WAGE.html
(free registration required)

[MSgt213]

1. That's what I want. I want a law that says employees can have their

managers arrested if they steal from them.

[BR_Parkway]

3. If they could prove it, there's no reason they couldn't go to the DA

and demand that charges be pressed. If they refused, I'm sure some of the local newspapers would enjoy the story.

[JHB]

6. Local papers might not like it as much as you think...

...if the store in question (and others like them) are major advertisers.

And the DA may treat it as a "contract dispute", not criminal theft. Add to that the DA's likely target would be the low-level manager left with all scut work, not the district managers and corporate suits who set official policy in accordance with the law, then turn around and pressure the bottom-level managers to keep payroll down by any means necessary or they'll find someone else who will.

This is also part of the argument for a comprehensive and universal health care system: part of the reason for keeping hours down is to make sure some "part-time" employees don't work full-time hours, thus making them elligible for whatever benefits (medical, retirement) the company offers, and the low-level managers risk losing their medical benefits if they don't follow company cut-payroll directives to their full-but-illegal extent.

[MSgt213]

7. No fuck that go to the DA shit. Call cops put cuffs on and haul their

asses off.

[cprise]

2. Class warfare

Punishment for essentially stealing a loaf of bread is back in fashion. How else do you compete with Chinese but to treat your workers like Chinese subjects?

[lpbk2713]

4. You make an interesting point.

And I'd like to see it happen. Problem is, as it is now, some global corporations have teams of lawyers that could keep the case in court until you die of old age and your estate would get nothing but a bill for legal expenses.

[apnu]

5. companies can afford good lawyers, employees can't

Its disgusting, but its the reality of the America we live in. With our weak court system, and all of our "good" (meaning good at what they do) laywers working expensive defense firms... those who can pay for it will always get away with a slap on the wrist or scott free. Those who can't pay for it will suffer the full weight of the law.

We may not like it, and we hope to change it, but today in America, those who have the cash can do whatever they please. And those who don't get the shaft.

[JHB]

8. boink