Talk:Wage theft

Blatant Fraud

It seems that most of the sources have no relation to what they're supposed to be about. Further, the only data sources are to the EPI, which is a partisan organisation whose links in this article actually don't appear to offer substantive evidence, either. Someone needs to recover some actual data in order to support this article, or it should be recommended for deletion straight away. Many of the links are broken and need fixed, too. There is nothing legitimate about this article as it currently stands, and it appears to be, not an area of scholarship per se, but an area of ideological interest.

Because the article is structured in such a way, I am going to add a POV tag, and request some source verification, and that someone bring forward some relevant data, lest the page simply be put up for deletion.

Your accusations appear to be groundless. There are numerous other sources other than Economic Policy Institute, such as the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, numerous mainstream media sources such as The New York Times and the book Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid— And What We Can Do About It, to name a few. There is no way this article is going to be deleted based on your accusations. This appears to be a bad case of WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 22:33, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

It seems as though this account was removed entirely. I've removed the notes from the article Bluefirecorp (talk) 17:49, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

the new york times link is paywalled but appears to source a broken link

the epi did no original research as far as i can tell, they were simply parroting the UCLA report and extrapolating from the basis of 3000 surveys to 30 million people Meistro1 (talk) 09:09, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

You may not have looked at those sources, then! None of them link to the data in question (although I have not read the book in question: I'm just talking about the UCLA piece). Low-quality sources shouldn't be tolerated. I'm all for the article existing if the claims in it can be backed up, but as it stands, the sources are not sufficient and many of them don't line up at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Godotskimp (talk • contribs) 03:23, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Rest of the world?

What a crap article. If you can't write an article that applies to the whole world then don't bother. There is a world outside of the USA. This article needs to write from a worldwide perspective.--109.117.229.166 (talk) 19:03, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I've tagged the article for perspective bias. 85.178.218.180 (talk) 16:24, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

It should be tagged for blatant non-NPOV. The entire concept is a left-wing conspiracy theory. People earn as much as they can convince their employer to pay them for as little work as they can do, and employers want to pay as little as they can for as much work as they can get out of them. That's how it's always been. Now if the article began with "A liberal pejorative term wherein...", that would neutralize the article. TodKarlson (talk) 18:13, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Are there reliable sources supporting any of this? 85.178.196.164 (talk) 00:59, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Article Should Just Be Renamed Wage Theft in US

It's a helpful article for people working in the US or concerned about US workers. I think an article on wage theft worldwide would be overly long and complex, but articles focusing on the topic by nation could be very useful to readers. This article is already oversimplified and needs a lot of work. It needs to address variations in law in all 50 states, District of Columbia, and the territories and protectorates. Much of this article only addresses federal law and could be dangerously misleading to workers looking for help. For example, the penalties and enforcement section suggests the US Department of Labor is the agency that enforces laws against wage theft and that Miami-Dade county in Florida is the first jurisdiction in the US to "ban Wage Theft." First of all, it is very hard to get DOL to get involved in individual wage theft claims. State agencies enforcing state laws and private attorneys enforcing either state of federal law in a private cause of action are better resources than DOL if you have experienced wage theft. Indeed, activists in your local worker center may know how to prosecute a case under state law without ever engaging an attorney. The statement regarding Miami-Dade county is just plain wrong and not supported by the cited resource. Wage theft has been "banned" in every jurisdiction in the US since the passage of FLSA and many state jurisdictions soon after passed parallel protections soon after. This page needs a lot of work, but trying to discuss this from a global perspective isn't going to add any clarity. Retitling this article as Wage Theft in The United States would. Sean C. Murphy

"an article on wage theft worldwide would be overly long" We can summarize when articles become too long. 85.178.218.180 (talk) 16:24, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Hiring Collusion

Hi,

I edited this article adding a section about hiring collusion and completing the "other forms" section. This contribution is part of the academic project Education Program:University of California, San Diego (UCSD)/Comm 106I: Internet Industries (Spring 2014). As a very first time writting for Wikipedia, I would welcome your critics and suggestions about this edit. Thanks. So1962 (talk) 05:47, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there are that many editors following this article, but your edit to article should be discussed on this page first. One problem I see with your edit is that it doesn't seem clear to me that the material is relevant to the topic of the article. You have not included any references that mention hiring collusion as a form of wage theft. The material that you are adding I think would be more appropriate in the collusion article or in an article of its own such as Major League Baseball collusion. In the collusion article it would be added as a one sentence example of collusion. Guest2625 (talk) 08:39, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Here's your edit:

===Hiring collusion===

Hiring collusion is different from the forms of wage thefts listed above because it relies on the denial of prospect wage raises that someone can expect in the course of one’s professional career.Collusion is a dishonest agreement between two parties (persons, institutions or organizations) to mislead a third one. It implies a deliberate attempt to prejudice a third party by breaking the balance of bargaining powers. When such agreements are secret their are known as tacit collusion. In economy, collusion really often involves price or wage fixing in an attempt to trespass antitrust law.

Drawing on it,hiring collusion designates an agreement between companies not to solicit one another’s employees. It is different from Non-compete clause which aims at preventing one party to engage in commercial activities competing with the other. Non compete clause is usually found in a contract between employers and employees to prevent the latter from joining a competing firms immediately after their resignation. Whereas non compete clause is part of contract law and thus willingly accepted and negotiated by both parties; hiring collusion is secretive and creates a situation with asymmetric bargaining powers giving the advantage to one party over the other. Companies have recourse to hiring collusion in order to manage competition and maintain their monopole on a given market. By agreeing not to solicit each other’s employees, their shape labor demand according to their own interests preventing wages from being the adjustment variable of a free and competitive labor market. Therefore, the absence of competition within the demand maintains wages artificially low working as wage theft .

This is what was claimed in the 2013 class action lawsuit High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation filed by over 64 000 software engineers against Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucas Film and Pixar. The plaintiffs (all former employees of the previously cited companies) alleged that their salaries were kept down by the collusion of their companies not to solicit one another’s employees between 2005 and 2009 in violation of Section 1 15 U.S.C §1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act and Section 4 15 U.S.C § 15 of the Clayton Antitrust Act .They argued that in a functioning labor market, defendants would have been competing by soliciting each other’s employee through what they referred as “cold calling”. In the certiorari order granting the case class action lawsuit; the Northern district court of California defined “cold calling” as a hiring technique consisting in “communicating directly in any manner- including orally, in writing, telephonically or electronically- with another company’s employee who has not otherwise applied for a job” . Plaintiffs argued that “cold calling” is a strategic bargaining tool for employees granting them the power to negotiate wage promotions or accept higher paid jobs. Hence, collusion on cold calling directly affected their professional mobility and the possibilities of wage raises that come with it. So in this case, plaintiffs did not think about wage theft as the actual salary they should have received for the work accomplished but instead as a hold on what they could have earned. They estimated the loss to $3 billion in wages and asked the tech companies to pay them back.

Eventually, the defendants avoided a trial announcing on April 24, 2014 that they had filed a letter with US District Judge Lucy Koh settling the lawsuit. The terms of the settlement haven’t been disclosed but are estimated to $300 million dollars which equates to 1/10 of the estimated loss

===Other forms===

However, the development of the Internet Industry and the new job opportunities that came with it challenged this reality. The dematerialization of work as well as social relation characterizing the rise of Internet made labor law and worker’s protection harder to implement. Scholars such as Marwick and Terranova thought about the Web 2.0 as the cradle of new forms of “unpaid labors” or “free labors” which could enlarge the scope of wage theft.

In Chapter 4 of Status Update, Marwick argues that social media turned self presentation into a branding strategy. She defines self branding as “a series of marketing strategies applied to the individual [ …] a way of thinking about the self as a salable commodity that can tempt a potential employer” p.166. She supports her argument through the analysis of Gary Vaynerchuk and Tim Ferriss's professional career; two American entrepreneurs whose fame and success rely on a highly efficient use of social media. Marwick explains that self branding leads to the creation of an “edited self” p.196 which require permanent attention. According to her, the intertwining of private and professional characterizing self branding leads to a continuous “ brandmonitoring” p.191 that she refers to as “immaterial and emotional labor” p.196 falling into the sphere of “unpaid labor”. p.191. Therefore, Marwick’s analysis of self-branding could be understood as a contemporary form of wage theft endorsing the neoliberal individualization and privatization of economic risk

References

Gender pay inequality

Paragraph removed:

An issue not always recognized as a central topic in wage theft is the existent gender pay gap between men and women. Despite the creation of the FLSA in 1938, it was not until the Equal Pay Act of 1963 passed on June 10, 1963 that employers were forced to pay men and women equal salaries for equal job titles. Two court cases would become pivotal in strengthening the Equal Pay Act. In 1970, Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co. ruled that jobs do not have to be identical across gender for the pay to be the same. The jobs only need to be substantially equal. This counteracted the employers who were changing the job titles of women in order to pay them less. Then in 1974, Corning Glass Works v. Brennan stated that employers could not justify the gender pay gap by arguing that it followed a traditional going market rate. Women currently make eight-tenths of the wages of their male counterparts, but a shift has been evident. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed in 2009. It gives employees 180 days from their last pay check to file a report against their employer for wage discrimination. Before this act was passed, employees had to file the report 180 days from the first pay check.

Paragraph was removed because it was not directly related to the topic of the article. No reference was given to indicate that gender pay inequality is a form of wage theft. Guest2625 (talk) 09:17, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Wage Theft is a Fuzzy Term, but This Contributor had an Interesting Take

Characterizing gender discrimination as wage theft is an interesting angle - and I think is a good bit of advocacy. That is, from a fairly realistic perspective, what employers are doing - pocketing wages due to female workers. However, wage theft is a term of art that arises in wage and hour legal work and generally refers to withheld "promised" pay or pay that does not meet minimum wage requirements. Paying workers less than others based on gender identity is unlawful discrimination and while a worker can recover those wages along with other damages as part of an award in a law suit, as a practice nobody refers to those lost wages as wage theft. Maybe they should. But, if we aren't going to let this section into this article, we should get rid of those references to pressuring workers out of filing workers' compensation claims. Workers Compensation isn't even wages and nobody talks about that as wage theft. Sure, it's your employer screwing you - but he is not stealing anybody's wages. Sean C. Murphy

References