Wage war on wage theft
Amid all the concerns over retail theft and petty larceny, there is one type of out-and-out theft that often flies under the radar and seldom goes punished, with victims frequently left to simply walk away taking a significant financial hit. That would be wage theft, which the Cornell University Worker Institute estimated robs New York workers of roughly $1 billion a year, dwarfing thefts that get much more attention.
That figure was cited by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last week in launching a new Worker Protection Unit, growing out of an earlier effort to prosecute wage theft and exploitation in the construction industry to now include a focused effort to go after violators in all industries, particularly those that rely on the labor of low-wage workers with less ability to fight back.
There are multiple local, state and federal entities that have some purview over labor violations, but unscrupulous employers see the distant possibility of fines as basically the cost of doing business, if they ever come at all. In a 2021 Center for Public
Integrity report on wage theft, a researcher noted that a cost-benefit analysis leads many employers to determine that “it’s cheaper to violate the law, even if you get caught.”
The specter of a criminal conviction, brought by a team focused exclusively on worker protection, might give them some additional pause. Next up, the other DAs should consider following suit, and Albany legislators should take up Bragg’s call to enact criminal statutes around wage theft, which currently isn’t specifically criminalized.
State officials should also take the example of Bragg’s small dedicated fund to provide restitution to victims of wage theft. Currently, even when violators are caught, companies going bankrupt or workers coming forward after judgements have been handed down means some employees can never recover their lost wages. That’s more than an inconvenience; for many of the victims impacted, a few thousand dollars in earned income they never received is a life-altering sum. We must do right by them.