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Submission + - How Employers Get Out of Paying Their Workers

HughPickens.com writes: We love to talk about crime in America and usually the rhetoric is focused on the acts we can see: bank heists, stolen bicycles and cars, alleyway robberies. But Zachary Crockett writes at Pricenomics that wage theft one of the more widespread crimes in our country today — the non-payment of overtime hours, the failure to give workers a final check upon leaving a job, paying a worker less than minimum wage, or, most flagrantly, just flat out not paying a worker at all. Most commonly, wage theft comes in the form of overtime violations. In a 2008 study, the Center for Urban Economic Development surveyed 4,387 workers in low-wage industries and found that some 76% of full-time workers were not paid the legally required overtime rate by their employers and the average worker with a violation had put in 11 hours of overtime—hours that were either underpaid or not paid at all. Nearly a quarter of the workers in the sample came in early and/or stayed late after their shift during the previous work week. Of these workers, 70 percent did not receive any pay at all for the work they performed outside of their regular shift. In total, unfairly withheld wages in these three cities topped $3 billion. Generalizing this for the rest of the U.S.’s low-wage workforce (some 30 million people), researchers estimate that wage theft could be costing Americans upwards of $50 billion per year.

Last year, the Economic Policy Institute made what is, to date, the most ambitious attempt to quantify the extent of reported wage theft in the U.S.and determined that “the total amount of money recovered for the victims of wage theft who retained private lawyers or complained to federal or state agencies was at least $933 million.” Obviously, the nearly $1 billion collected is only the tip of the wage-theft iceberg, since most victims never sue and never complain to the government. Commissioner Su of California says wage theft has harmed not just low-wage workers. “My agency has found more wages being stolen from workers in California than any time in history,” says Su. “This has spread to multiple industries across many sectors. It’s affected not just minimum-wage workers, but also middle-class workers.”

Comment Re:This isn't a question (Score 1) 623

In most common law jurisdictions, a religious ceremony has no legal standing at all. The magic in a marriage ceremony isn't "by the power invested in me by God", it is " by the power invested in me by the State of Massachusetts."

Churches' attachments to marriage is historic and I doubt there is anywhere in English speaking North America where a religious ceremony was ever required.

Comment Re: This isn't a question (Score 1) 623

Actually in many jurisdictions thee lack of marital status means even attempting to duplicate the full powers of a spouse in regards to incapacity can be all but impossible to replicate. Even powers of attorney and living wills don't quite deliver you the power in the event of your spouse's incapacity that a marriage license does.

Comment Re: This isn't a question (Score 5, Insightful) 623

Up until recently beating the shit out of your wife and forcing sexual intercourse on her against her will (spousal rape) was considered lawful and appropriate. Some traditional views just plain suck and we should welcome their demiwey.

This has nothing to do with Marxism, any more than throwing out laws banning miscegenation had anything to do with Marxism.

Comment Re:This isn't a question (Score 1) 623

Historically what constituted a marriage varied from place to place, and even in Medieval times there was no mandate in England requiring a church ceremony. In most jurisdictions in Europe where canon law governed marriage, all that was in fact required was for a couple to declare that they were married, and so long as they lived in that fashion, no ceremony was required at all. Marriage in ancient tienes, save where it involves the aristocracy, where marriage had political implications, wasn't that formalizeds an affair.

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