Wage Theft is a Bigger Problem Than Other Forms of Theft (2014)

As someone who used to practice law in a legal aid office, can confirm the scope and difficulty of the problem. Employees, especially lower income employees, have really limited access to the legal system; it's even worse with more vulnerable populations (immigrants, lower educated workers, etc.). Even basic stuff like employee stuff keeping their own independent hours records often doesn't happen. It's really a problem in places like farm labor.

For most of my adult life, I worked hourly jobs in low pay positions and "wage theft" always meant me, the employee, stealing from the company by not working every single second I was there. Interesting to see it defined the other way, "employers’ failure to pay workers money they are legally entitled to".

$933 million lost in unclaimed salary makes for ~$7.3 per worker per year in the US (~128m in 2018). Tese are of course, like the article says: claimed losses. Not many know about what they could have. There should be no unclear expectations in a workplace, but that is easier said than done. Lots of errors happen due to mistakes and incompetence, because people running companies are not special. I have no idea as to what would eradicate this. Perhaps…