Wage theft is the term used to describe the common workplace practice of not paying workers all the wages they earn. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has found these violations in more than half of the businesses they have investigated in entire industries such as construction, garment assembly, poultry processing, and retail. Among workers in low-wage industries in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, during a single week, over two-thirds were victims of wage theft. Nationwide, millions of workers each week, particularly those in low-wage jobs, suffer the theft of their wages by unscrupulous employers.

Wage theft includes:

• violations of minimum wage laws;
• non-payment of time-and-a-half overtime pay;
• workers being forced to work off the clock;
• workers not receiving their final paychecks when they end a job;
• workers having their tips stolen by management;
• workers mis-classifed as independent contractors instead of employees to enable employers to avoid paying minimum wages, overtime, and the employer share of payroll taxes, workers compensation insurance, and benefits; and
• in some egregious cases, workers are not paid at all, even after putting in hundreds or even thousands of hours of work.

What Can Be Done

1.    Diligent law enforcement by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and state Departments of Labor is needed to increase enforcement.

2.    National legislation is needed to strengthen protection of workers and enhance enforcement.

3.    State and local legislation is needed to prohibit wage theft and strengthen protections against payroll fraud.

4.    National legislation is needed to strengthen the universally-recognized right of workers to form or join a union; unions in the workplace are one of the best deterrents against wage theft.

5.    Strengthen community worker centers (over 200 have formed in the past decade) to help workers build their own power to recover wages and organize improvements in the workplace.

Get Involved to Stop Wage Theft

1.    Educate yourself and your congregation using the resources below and others.

2.    Volunteer with a worker center or religion-labor organization near you.

• Find a Worker Center near you 
• Find an Interfaith Worker Justice group 
• Find a Jobs with Justice group 
• Find a Seminarians for Worker Justice group  

3.    Support national, state, and local legislation to strengthen enforcement and penalties for wage theft.

4.    Work to end wage theft in your community. See Winning Wage Justice: An Advocate’s Guide to State and City Policies to Fight Wage Theft [1.11 MB]   from the National Employment Law Project

Resources

• Interfaith Worker Justice webpage on wage theft
• Resources on wage theft for congregations from Interfaith Worker Justice 
• A Primer on Wage Theft from Interfaith Worker Justice
• Stopping wage theft, an interview with Kim Bobo, author of Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid And What We Can Do About It and executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice.
• Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America's Cities [1.1MB] by Annette Bernhardt, et al., Center for Urban Economic Development, National Employment Law Project, and UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Researches interviewed a representative sample of over 4,300 workers in low-wage industries in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. More than two-thirds (68%) experienced at least one pay-related violation during the previous work week: 26% of workers were paid less than the legally required minimum wage; of the one-quarter of all the workers who worked overtime, 76% were not paid the legally-required overtime pay rate.
• Winning Wage Justice: An Advocate’s Guide to State and City Policies to Fight Wage Theft [1.11 MB]  from the National Employment Law Project
• Read and discuss Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid And What We Can Do About It by Kim Bobo. Order the book and download a congregational study guide.