"More Workers Are Claiming ‘Wage Theft’"

[applegrove]

More Workers Are Claiming ‘Wage Theft’

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/business/more-workers-are-claiming-wage-theft.html?_r=1

"SNIP.........................



Michael Rubin, one of the lawyers who sued Schneider, disagreed, saying there are many sound wage claims. “The reason there is so much wage theft is many employers think there is little chance of getting caught,” he said.


Commissioner Su of California said wage theft harmed not just low-wage workers. “My agency has found more wages being stolen from workers in California than any time in history,” she said. “This has spread to multiple industries across many sectors. It’s affected not just minimum-wage workers, but also middle-class workers.”

Many other states are seeing wage-theft cases. New York’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, has recovered $17 million in wage claims over the past three years. “I’m amazed at how petty and abusive some of these practices are,” he said. “Cutting corners is increasingly seen as a sign of libertarianism rather than the theft that it really is.”

In Nashville last February, nine housekeepers protested outside a DoubleTree hotel because the subcontractor that employed them had failed to pay a month’s wages. “The contractor said they didn’t have the money, that the hotel hadn’t paid them,” said Natalia Polvadera, a housekeeper. “We went to the hotel manager — he showed receipts that they had paid the contractor.”




............................SNIP"

[Trillo]

1. What's surprising is the NY AG asserting "amazement". NT