127,000 New York Workers Have Been Victims of Wage Theft

For Marcelino Zapoteco, the final straw came on a quiet night in 2018 at the restaurant Brioso on Staten Island. He was working alongside one of the managers who had been pulled in by the restaurant’s co-owner Pietro “Peter” DiMaggio to help as a waiter. At one point during the shift, Zapoteco watched the manager slip tip money into his pocket, when he was supposed to pool it to be shared with others.

Zapoteco, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, said he knew that the restaurant was grossly underpaying him during the more than seven years he worked there. When he served as a runner, bringing food to customers’ tables, he received as little as $10 for lunch and dinner shifts — far below the required minimum wage even when tips were included, he said.

Bosses steal billions from their workers every year

It’s been illegal for a company to pay an employee less than the minimum wage — today, at least $7.25 an hour, although in many states it’s higher — for nearly 80 years. So when Daniel started working at a restaurant in New York City almost a decade ago, he expected that’s what he’d make.

He was wrong. When he began his job, he says his boss paid him just around $5 an hour, despite the law at the time dictating that he had to make at least $7.25 an hour. Tipped workers can be legally paid less if their tips make up the difference, but when he worked in the front of the house as a waiter he said his boss pocketed almost all of the tips he and his coworkers earned.

The Uber Revolution Hinges On One Key Question

Lyft drivers have been shorted about $126 million in pay over the past four years, according to documents released Friday as part of a lawsuit against the company.

The massive back-pay estimate is based on a federal standard for per-mile reimbursements, but the alleged underpayment really centers on a much more fundamental and complicated question: Are people who drive for companies like Lyft and Uber employees, independent contractors, or something in between?

Victims left exposed in wage-theft war

After months of missing out on royalties he says he was owed, bounced cheques, and toiling at his job of roasting coffee in what he describes as a sweltering, broken-down cottage overrun with mice, Fiorildo Tenace finally decided to approach the Ministry of Labour.

His aim was to stand up for his rights. Instead, he lost his job.

“It was horrible,” he said. “This is Toronto. A lot of people are living paycheque to paycheque.”

Wage Theft Comes to America: The Facts That Drive the Sanders Revolt

In Denmark, companies like McDonald's and Burger King pay workers $20 an hour plus benefits, and don't bat an eye. These same companies, which are actually based in the U.S., pay American workers less than $9 with no benefits.

What is going on here?

The answer is simple and painful -- wage theft. In America, corporations can get away with stealing our wages, but in Denmark (and elsewhere), they can't. Virtually the entire bottom 95 percent of American wage earners are victims of wage theft ... perhaps including you!

How The Boss May Be Quietly Pocketing Your Server's Tips

Laurie Zabawa says she'd been working at a Hilton Garden Inn in Bozeman, Montana, for seven years when the owners outsourced the management of the hotel in 2012. For Zabawa, the hotel's banquet manager, this meant that any parties that took place in the hotel would now be overseen by an outside firm, an Ohio-based company called Gateway Hospitality Group.

The banquet workers whom Zabawa oversaw weren't being let go, so the service-industry lifer says she took the change in stride -- that is, until Gateway explained the new policy on gratuities.

SCOTUS Rules Workers Don’t Need To Be Paid for All Their Time Working

Stories of the horrid conditions for workers in Amazon warehouses have been trickling out for years: The temperatures at the warehouses vary wildly, with some workers having to work in sub-zero conditions, others passing out from days where the temperature soared above 100 degrees, workers crying from not being able to keep up the brutal pace demanded, and then being threatened with termination for crying. And we can now add another indignity to the list, coming yesterday at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in a 9-0 decision that it is legal for Amazon warehouse workers not to be paid for a portion of their workday.

As Bad As You Think It Is, It's Worse: Wage Theft Comes to America

In Denmark fast food workers make $20 an hour plus benefits, and the corporations who employ them are still profitable. Why there and not here?

The answer is simple and painful -- wage theft. In America corporations are systematically stealing our wages. Virtually everyone in the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution now suffers from wage theft... perhaps, including you!

With the Wages That Have Been Stolen From Them, Apple Factory Workers Could Buy 1,460 iPhone 6s a Month

Apple has just unveiled a fresh batch of cutting-edge products to the dazzlement of consumers worldwide. Also this week, labor watchdogs revealed fresh evidence of systematic labor abuses in Apple’s supply chain in China—to a decidedly more muted response from the tech world. The revelations of wage and hour violations and hazardous working conditions don’t herald a new invention; they instead represent a new status quo of relentless technological progress that comes at a hidden social cost that is shifted onto an invisible labor force.

More Workers Are Claiming ‘Wage Theft’

MIRA LOMA, Calif. — Week after week, Guadalupe Rangel worked seven days straight, sometimes 11 hours a day, unloading dining room sets, trampolines, television stands and other imports from Asia that would soon be shipped to Walmart stores.

Even though he often clocked 70 hours a week at the Schneider warehouse here, he was never paid time-and-a-half overtime, he said. And now, having joined a lawsuit involving hundreds of warehouse workers, Mr. Rangel stands to receive more than $20,000 in back pay as part of a recent $21 million legal settlement with Schneider, a national trucking company.