Violations Vary by Job Category and Industry
Minimum wage violations vary significantly - most flagrantly in apparel and textile manufacturing, personal and repair services, and private households; less often in residential construction, social assistance, education, and home health care. Other industries fall somewhere in between.
Violations also vary by job category. Faring worst are child care workers, beauty, dry cleaning and general repair workers, and those employed as sewing and garment workers. Best off are general construction workers, waiters, cafeteria workers, bartenders, and teachers' assistants.
Overall, 64% of workers got hourly wages. The rest received either a flat weekly or daily amount. Non-hourly workers fared worst as well as those paid in cash, not company checks, and "piece rate" employees, subjected to unattainable productivity levels to earn minimum wages. In addition, companies with less than 100 employees had almost double the violations rate of larger firms.
Overtime violations occur frequently as 76% of respondents exceeding 40 hours work during the previous week were denied time-and-a-half pay as required. Non-hourly workers fared worst, especially with jobs in personal and repair services, private households, retail and drug stores, and home health care. Best off were food and furniture manufacturing, transportation, and warehousing employees. Again, companies with under 100 employees were the most flagrant violators.
Off-the-clock violations were also commonplace, affecting 70% of workers surveyed, unpaid for exceeding their regular shifts, especially in private households, social assistance, and home health care jobs.
Meal break violations affected 69% of workers, denied breaks or having them shortened or interrupted. Overall, study findings revealed "routine violations of labor and employment laws across the wide range of industries, occupations and workplaces....But the low-wage labor market is not monolithic (as) 49% (of workers said) their employers offered them health insurance, provided paid vacation days, paid sick days, or had given them a raise in the past year."
Workplace Violations Related to Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Other Worker Characteristics
Not surprisingly, US-born workers and those best educated fared best, undocumented foreign-born ones (especially Latinos) worst, and women experienced more violations than men over minimum wages. In contrast, overtime, off-the-clock, and meal break violations varied much less demographically.
Wage Theft
As noted above, it steals 15% of worker wages amounting to $2,634 annually on an average $17,616 total earnings. Also in a given week, over 1.1 million workers in the three cities studied experienced at least one pay-related violation costing them over $56 million in total - mostly over unpaid minimum wages but also the above cited abuses.
Protecting American Workers - What Can Be Done
The problem is endemic in key industries throughout the country, and has a profound effect on workers, their families and communities. The cities studied aren't unique as evidence nationwide suggests. Low-wage worker rights are compromised in jobs ranging from agriculture, meat and poultry processing, hotels, nursing homes, day care centers, retailing, and residential construction in every city where exploitive day labor hiring sites exist.
Ending employer abuses depends on strengthening labor laws and having federal and local governments enforce them. However, since passage of the landmark 1935 National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act, workers have been disadvantaged ever since, more than ever today at a time of weak unions, empowered companies, and an economic crisis letting employers cut jobs, wages and benefits freely, and have government turn a blind eye to their most egregious violations.
Fixing these problems needs new leadership in charge of mass organizing, building unity and strength of numbers, and educating workers on what they've lost and how to win it back. In a globalized corporate world and hostile governments, workers must go on the offensive, take to the streets, go on strike, hold boycotts, demand more from elected officials, replace unresponsive ones, and battle the old-fashioned way for fair labor laws and government officials they can count on for enforcement. Short of that, labor rights will keep deteriorating until workers across the board are totally at the mercy of unscrupulous employers, while government remains indifferent to their plight. Conditions are well eroded already, and nothing short of total mass-commitment has a chance to reverse it.
Addendum on Wal-Mart
