Posts Tagged ‘ Los Angeles ’

Study says LA surpasses NYC, Chicago in Wage Theft

March 8th, 2010. By AbiK

Every so often there’s a little news story out there that doesn’t get as much attention as it perhaps should. Take a story by Max Taves at LAWeekly.com not long ago. The headline: Unscrupulous Employers Skim $26.2 Million. Ok, surprise, surprise. But the real headline hits you when you read the subhead: That’s per week, from lower-income Angeleno’s paychecks.

$26.2 million per week? Rack that one up on an annual basis and now you’re talking over $1 billion in alleged wage theft.

Taves’ article (2/18/10) is based on a study co-authored by UCLA sociologist, Ruth Milkman, and Victor Narro. The 69-page study, Wage Theft and Workplace Violations in Los Angeles, concludes that 17% of LA county’s poorest workers are basically ripped off to the tune of $26.2 million each week—money they never see in their paychecks. Money that they should see in the form of minimum wage pay, overtime pay for time-and-a-half overtime worked, and rest and meal breaks. The reason, the authors argue, is that employers in LA county “know there’s no enforcement.”

What’s interesting in this study—aside from the sheer numbers involved—is that when the authors compared LA to those in NYC or Chicago, they found that LA low-wage workers were more likely to be Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: California Labor, California Overtime, Los Angeles, Milkman, Narro, Wage Theft
Posted in Emerging Issues, Employment | 1 Comment »