HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

I thought this video was going to be a fun top ten list, then I realized that most of the theft in America is the rich robbing the poor. Literally! Not even in a roudabout way...literally not paying them for more than twenty billion dollars of work every year. This literally theft. No one goes to jail. Ever. It's cool. Don't worry...we have a minimum wage...ish.

The folks who defend wage theft say that:

1. Minimum wages prevent certain work from getting done...like work done by undocumented immigrants and the very very poor. These people wouldn't have jobs at all otherwise! The laws are too strict!

2. Most wage theft is just poor management. The companies don't know it's happening! It's just the floor managers who are causing these problems! It's not a CEO's responsibility to know what their employees are up to! (that is exactly what their job is.)

3. It's not as big of a deal as big fancy non-profits think!

It is, of course, extremely difficult to measure...but surveys of workers regularly show a huge variety of different kinds of wage theft. Worried you might be being stolen from?

Here's a FAQ to learn more: http://www.wagetheft.org/faq

And some more reading:
https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year-survey-data-show-millions-of-workers-are-paid-less-than-the-minimum-wage-at-significant-cost-to-taxpayers-and-state-economies/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft

https://www.epi.org/press/employers-stole-at-least-2-billion-from-workers-in-2015-and-2016/



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