More Workers Are Claiming ‘Wage Theft’ | Hacker News Reader

More Workers Are Claiming ‘Wage Theft’

nytimes.com

64 pointsakg_6754 comments

Other NYTimes coverage puts the obscenity of wage theft in much clearer terms:

> One of the causes of this epidemic of wage theft — which, according to Mr. Lafer’s E.P.I. report, involves sums “far greater than the combined total stolen in all the bank robberies, gas station robberies, and convenience store robberies in the country” — is lax enforcement of the country’s wage and hour laws. In 1941, there was one federal inspector for every 11,000 workers. As of 2008, there was one for every 141,000 workers. “The average employer has just a 0.001 percent chance of being investigated in a given year,” Mr. Lafer estimates. Because there is so little risk of getting caught, one-third of all employers who have been found guilty of violating wage and hour laws continue to do it.[0]

Hourly labor laws are ridiculous. And saying that 60 million workers hourly are harmed significantly understates how awful these laws are.

> According to one multicity study, in a single week, nearly two-thirds of low-wage workers had, on average, 15 percent of their pay stolen by their employers.

60 million of today's workers will lose wealth that could compound into more wealth. Then there are the million or so new workers who will join the workforce at the end of the year. In four decades of poor enforcement, a hundred million people have been harmed, two-third of them losing 15% of their paychecks every week that could have compounded over those 40 years into meaningful life savings.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/the-republic...

Currently working as a risk manager in a multi-mega-monster insurance company. We do a lot of analyses using the 99.5% value at risk, i.e., the value that there is only a .5% chance of exceeding. 0.001% is well into the range in which the risk would just be ignored.

My wife works in a hotel (housekeeping) and she tells me the same thing. Every week she has to go with great care through her payslip to check if she's been paid correctly. When they've made a mistake and we contact the hotels finance department it's like; "Oops, sorry." but my gut feeling is that they do this on purpose. Imagine, scamming thousands of employees per week on few hours here and there, must be quite a saving.

Yes, the less power you have, the more it happens. I see it happen all the time. The more powerful the people, the less seriously they treat any debt they owe you.

Of course, debts in the other direction (from the less-powerful to the more-powerful) are considered sacred.

This is more universal than just the US, and than a specific point in time.

IMO, any company that asks employees to work more than 40 hours a week and doesn't pay for those hours is doing 'wage theft'. Classifying employees as exempt seem to be a common method used by employers.

It surprises me how often on HN startup employees claim to work 70-80 hours without any complaints. And, startup employers expect more hours without paying.

I recently quit a startup since 60 hour weeks were expected. It made me do a hard self-evaluation and come to the conclusion that no job was worth that for me.

40 hours is an arbitrary number. I think whatever hours is fine, as long as both parties agree on it and are up front about it.

In the U.S., the classification of exempt vs. non-exempt employees is specified by federal law, so companies can't just make that decision on their own. Unfortunately, software developers are legally exempted from having to be paid overtime:

"More specifically, the special computer employee exemption applies to workers who apply systems analysis techniques and procedures to determine hardware, software, or system functional specifications, or who design, develop, test or modify computer systems or programs based on user or design specifications."[1]

However, if a startup (or any other company) has non-exempt employees such as clerical workers or cleaning staff, they must be paid overtime if they work over 40 hours a week.

Of course, if a company wants to pay a software developer for overtime, they're free to do so. I've never heard of that being done, however.

[1] http://www.flsa.com/computer.html

There is a lot of leeway in exempt classification. Companies have lot of influence on law making process so I am not surprised that more jobs are considered exempt.

Personally, I have seen exempt status being abused by companies. One technology company I worked for classified certain technical roles as exempt until the company merged with another company. I was not purview to the decision making or what led to reversing the decision, but during the merger process, these technical roles were reclassified as non-exempt.

From http://www.trinet.com/resources/industry_articles/exempt_vs_...

"In California, employees falling within the computer professionals exemption must be paid at least $39.90 per hour, which translates to a monthly salary of $6,927.75 and an annual salary of $83,132.93 (these figures typically increase every year)."

Edit: A better reference - http://www.shrm.org/templatestools/hrqa/pages/californiaexem...

In Texas, the high-tech exemption kicks in at around $1800 per month, apparently. Which isn't all that great if you live in one of the high-tech centers of Texas.

http://www.twc.state.tx.us/news/efte/exemptions_from_minimum...

Of course, if a company wants to pay a software developer for overtime, they're free to do so. I've never heard of that being done, however.

I'm going to add this to my list of "Harmful Assumptions That Developers Make".

If you assume that what your company does is normal, it's a small leap to classify it in your head as fair. From there, you can go your whole career never expecting something as basic as being paid for every hour you work.

But it doesn't have to be that way. I've personally arranged my work contracts such that I've been paid for every hour spent working for a company since around 2001.

You, and everybody else in tech, should do the same. We're not fast food workers who need to either take what we're given or face having no job. We're free to pick and choose from the single best market for developer talent that there has ever been.

"I've personally arranged my work contracts such that I've been paid for every hour spent working for a company since around 2001."

Just curious if you managed to negotiate this as a regular employee, or do you work as an independent contractor?

Bloomberg and Twitter both paid interns time-and-a-half overtime when I worked there.

There was once a software consulting firm called Software Architects or SARK. They paid overtime. Not time and a half, but overtime. It was great. That's how I afforded flooring for my house as a recent college grad. They would even buy dinner if I worked over 10 hours in a day. Sadly they were bought by another firm. That firm is not so kind or forward thinking.

I don't know what is wrong with the united states. This idea that somehow a subcontracting relationship should wash the outer shell company clean of the necessity to comply with the law is just offensive, and if widely accepted, it renders our laws nearly meaningless.

Also, if you've never seen wage theft, you've never worked in fast food. It happened all the time to me and my friends in the suburbs.

I used to watch kung fu flicks where a town of workers wouldn't get their wages, then the bosses would stomp them down if they let out the slightest peep. Eventually some hero would show up to fight the bosses and eventually win back the worker's wages.

I lived in China for nearly nine years, and saw wage theft on a regular basis. The working class is getting used and abused in the US, and I predicted several years ago that they would follow in China's footsteps. Looks like that time has arrived.

> This has spread to multiple industries across many sectors. It’s affected not just minimum-wage workers, but also middle-class workers.

I have no idea how much of an issue this is and what the real-world implications for the individuals are, but if it has become a systematic phenomenon, then maybe it's worth rethinking the rules?

If it really is as wide-spread as they say, then having everyone play by the book might result in a redistribution of large amounts of money, thus impacting inflation .. which I guess is hardly in anyone's interest.

What do you propose? Making the rules say it's OK for employers to exploit their workers?

> What do you propose?

For starters, rational discourse. I don't see much point in being cynical.

If there is demand for those overtime hours and people willing to supply them .. and society as a whole is better off for it in the end, but our rules prohibit it, then clearly there's adequate reason to question the rules.

We need to conduct research on how both alternatives - i.e. either enforcing the rules or changing them - would affect everyday life, and then, as a democratic society, let people make a deliberate decision as to which alternative they prefer.

Hold on there.

Society has already made a judgement that those overtime hours only make society better off when an employer is willing to pay extra for them. Implicit in that is a judgment that neither employers nor employees properly account for the social cost of that overtime (because of short-run vs. long-run considerations, impacts on third parties like the employee's friends and family and so on).

Making the case that the social costs have changed and revisiting that judgment democratically is one thing. Evading that judgment by trickery (especially when that can involve tricking the employee) is something very different - cheating the system by shifting the social costs of overtime where they do not belong.

> Evading that judgment by trickery (especially when that can involve tricking the employee) is something very different

Yes, agreed.

My point was that if it's a wide-spread issue, as the article claims, then employees engaging in those activities probably knew what was expected of them beforehand, and still went ahead with it.

If on the other hand it indeed is "trickery", then it's not a wide-spread issue (since tricking people relies on the practice being uncommon enough to not be anticipated), and is thus something that can be sensibly dealt with in courts on a case-by-case basis.

Your argument seems to rely on the assumption that the employees have much of a choice. In theory there's supposed to be a free labor market, but in practice employers hold a much stronger hand than employees. It's hard for employees to vote with their feet when facing the threat of unemployment. Thus their "engaging in those activities" can not exactly be counted as any kind of approval.

Some solutions for this could be stronger unions protecting worker's rights, stronger punishments against employers who take advantage of the weak bargaining position of workers, or providing basic income to tip the balance of power a bit more in the worker's favour.

might result in a redistribution of large amounts of money, thus impacting inflation .. which I guess is hardly in anyone's interest

This is the most plutocratic self-serving thing I've seen on HN today. You're arguing for the legalisation of wage theft on the basis that it might disrupt prices.

Yes, if you have an economy where all the growth goes to the 1% and the 99% see no change, that might be good for price stability. But why in God's name would anyone want to live like that?

> You're arguing for the legalisation of wage theft on the basis that it might disrupt prices.

No. I'm arguing that we're currently labeling something as "theft", that might not actually be theft, and that we should thus take a closer look at the issue.

> if you have an economy where all the growth goes to the 1% and the 99% see no change

Yes and no. Growth (and progress) will go to everyone - Obviously, new technologies will be available to everyone, since there'd be little point in them if the average consumer couldn't afford them. Actual money however will only to to the "1%" (or whatever other small fraction).

The idea is that since, in total, those "1%" will spend less of that money on consumables/personal-indulgences, most of this money will either be taken out of circulation (and thus damping inflation) or handled by professionals (and thus put to good use).

> But why in God's name would anyone want to live like that?

(1) Because it makes for a more easily predictable future, resulting in less headaches.

(2) Because less of the work performed by humanity as a whole will be squandered on unimportant endeavours.

Like I said, what is the alternative? Give people more money to spend on things like booze and vacation trips?

might not actually be theft

I'm happy to call it fraud instead? Agreeing to pay people for a particular time and then failing to pay them is, at the very least, breach of contract. Falsifying records in order to reduce people's pay is definitely fraud.

most of this money will either be taken out of circulation

It doesn't go in a Scrooge McDuck money bin. It goes straight back into circulation as investments or bank deposits.

handled by professionals (and thus put to good use)

Profoundly elitist. We're taking the money off the poor because they might otherwise use it to enjoy themselves or even something really unproductive like feeding their children or receiving medical treatment!

> I'm happy to call it fraud instead? [...] at the very least, breach of contract

Well, downloading youtube videos is a breach of contract too.

You can try to attach all sorts of alternate labels to this, it doesn't change the fundamental issue underneath. I'm not questioning how adequate the semantics of the label are, but rather how adequately our legal framework captures reality here.

Sometimes reality evolves in ways such that the legal framework around it needs to be updated/re-evaluated. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's part of the democratic process.

That's all I'm saying, and I fail to see any formal, moral or legal issue with this.

> It goes straight back into circulation as investments or bank deposits.

Some of the money in bank deposits effectively is in a "money bin". Meanwhile investments on the other hand will (at least most of the time) flow through certain desirable channels that "disposable income" for the most part doesn't.

> Profoundly elitist

Is it? Isn't this the standard economic theory that's being tought to everyone currently?

> We're taking the money off the poor because they might otherwise use it to enjoy themselves

You fail to realize that it's not money that people need/crave but rather goods and services. Taking away money, in order to ensure a steady supply of goods and services, improves the situation for everyone.

> or even something really unproductive like feeding their children or receiving medical treatment!

Having a growing and healthy workforce is in any society's best interest, and a large part of its competitive advantage. Which is in part why children are subsidized by the governement in so many ways. After all, what's point of money if there's no one to exchange it with?

At the same time though we must figure out how to maintain this growth in a sustainable fashion - and I doubt that the optimal solution here is to simply hand people more purchasing power.

You, much like the author of the article, seem to fail to understand that there's no perfect answer here. This is an issue that needs fixing, and there seem to generally exist 2 solutions, both of which present a compromise.

While we currently don't have all the data necessary to make that decision, the article clearly seems to prefer one of those 2 alternatives while carelessly neglecting the negative impacts of it.

I on the other hand think that it's worthwile, for everyone, to consider the negative aspects too, before rushing to a conclusion. Do you see anything wrong with this line of reasoning?

Inflation as long as it does not run out of control is in plenty of peoples interest it devalues the value of debt ask any home owner.

Ask a Japanese person about how deflation is bad for the economy / them

> it devalues the value of debt ask any home owner

That's hardly a benefit for most, seeing as how they (most likely)

(1) actually need their home for living in it, so it doesn't make much difference how highly its priced

(2) have the interest rates for their debt bound to the inflation in one way or the other

> Ask a Japanese person about how deflation is bad for the economy

I was talking about damping inflation. I doubt deflation is a serious issue "in the West", given our culture of spending.

Also, as devastating as the real-world effects may have been in the past, all deflation means is that

(1) we need to find more worthwile activities to invest our efforts in. Imho this would be a much needed reality check in some sectors .. but like I said, I doubt it'll be happening any time soon.

(2) we're on our way towards post-scarcity and can start taking things easier from now on. (If only..)

1 and if your priced out of the housing market? what then not everyone has $100k of savings for a deposit.

A lot of the euro zone central banks are/where worried about deflation.

Most people in the west have a substantial amount of debt and so would be impacted severely by deflation.

Disgusting, but not surprising. A corporation is a soulless entity with one goal: maximize profits. That doesn't produce ethical, human-friendly actions.

Not really - a corporation is a group of people. Sometimes those in control of it have no goal other than profit maximization, but by no means always.

Well, often if those running a corporation do not have profit maximization as their primary goal, they are voted out by investors. Essentially, maximizing profit becomes the job of the leaders as requested by those invested. There are some exceptions where corporations are profitable by targeting towards environmental things, or other causes, but the bottom line of profit is still there... Especially so with larger corporations.

I suspect those downvoting gress don't understand what he's saying at all. His claim that "sometimes", thos ein charge aren't only thinking about profit maximization is excluding the case you're describing, where "those in charge" is some combination of investors and the actual execs (specifically, in your example, "those in charge" _are_ in favor of profit maximization).

There are a fair few examples in tech where founders have managed to hold on to a disproportionate amount of control and can much more accurately said to be fully "in charge", and those are the cases gress is claiming exists.

Thanks - that is part of what I'm saying. Also, as another point, 'profit maximization' is predicting the future, and there is a lot of room for different views of what the future will be.

Corporations of sufficient size are indistinguishable from quasi-intelligent entities that merely utilize humans as processing nodes: http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2013/02/hostile-ai-youre-...

I know this isn't the point you were addressing, but according to the law in the US the corporation is sometimes a person. Everyone's favourite source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood In relation to other places, see The City of London. There is an incredible situation with corporations there where they get to vote as if they were a number of people (equal to employee numbers). It's surreal.

The City of London has that arrangement because it's a district where vastly more people commute in than live there. It's a square mile almost entirely populated by offices.

(Although it has "corporation" in the name it has nothing to do with limited liability companies as the usual meaning of "corporation". It's a local government that's a millenium old and predates both modern banking and company law.)

But they city has no real political power its one of those old hangovers in the uk political system - like when university graduates got two vote's - which was only abolished after ww2

In comparison, the police force has one goal: to serve and protect. Therefore their actions are always ethical and human-friendly.

As a fan of memorable and incisive rebuttals, I tip my hat to you. I'm saving this in my arsenal.

Police serve state interests, and protect their employer's (the state's) policies from the population.

Anyway, it's just a propagandistic motto, like "Don't be Evil". We're discussing legal and structural constraints on corporations, that force them to care only about maximizing profit and marketshare. (Otherwise they fail, or get legal action, etc.)

After all, corporations are artificial state creations too.

With police, they're armed bureaucrats of the state which enforce policy on the population with violence. (And the threat thereof.) In that light, their actions are unsurprising.

i have an applicable anecdote: .. in terse

i worked 120hrs in a week, was refused overtime by splitting my duties into three 40hr positions, did research, went to the DOJ, they sat on it for 9 months, then refused and threatened me, i sent the DOJ lawyer's secretary my research, she went over his head, and i got the pay due to me

i lost a job in nyc, at the time of employment i was 'wearing many hats' which really just meant i was doing the work of three people: managing five properties, running a catering service, doing the accounting at four of the five properties;

i was putting in 14-18 hour days 7 days a week, i was homeless and was just glad to have something to do instead of sleeping on the F line, also.. making money

the way the payroll avoided paying me overtime was by splitting my check into these three different positions, by doing this i could work 90-120 hours a week, my 'personal best' was 123 but individually each of my personalities would be working less than 40 hours

the firing was abrupt, ugly and full of calculated politics

i was upset and wanted validation of my hard work so i went to the local library and looked up NYC wage laws

i found out that forbidding this 'task splitting' tactic is baked right into the law so i knew i had a case for getting the overtime i felt i deserved, again, i was homeless so i spent countless hours in the stacks looking over legal decisions to find precedence

i even covered potential roadblocks along the lines of 'we are unable to find his old timecards' from my former employer by investigating the law as it pertains to how long documents on employees must be kept by an employer

confident in my case i went to the DOJ, they appointed me a lawyer, and he assured me he'd look into it

9 months later and i still have yet to hear anything, i was told it may take 30days to 6 months, and i had moved on emotionally at this point so i was giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, at 9 months i decided it was time to do my own follow up, lawyer is unable to remember me or my case and has to call me back in a week after he finds my old file, explains that he did an investigation consisting of interviewing the owner of the establishment who claimed he paid all overtime wages and interviewing random employees who all said they were paid what was owed them, his conclusion? i was a crazy person, he told me to stop calling and hung up on me

i called back immediately, i asked if he had looked at my timecards, looked at payroll, looked at accounting logs, he said that kind of work is only necessary if other employees state concern as well, hung up on me again

i called back and the phone rang for an hour before i gave up

i called every day for three days, if he answered he'd hear my voice and immediately hang up on me

i went down to the offices myself but he had gone home for the day, the next day when i called he threatened to have me arrested if i come to the office again and then hung up on me

i called back but this time, instead of screaming i was welcomed by a friendly voice, she explained that she was the lawyer's secretary and asked what i did that was making him so upset everyday, i explained my situation and that i had a stack of documents: paystubs, timecards, precedence, verbose and organised personal logs; that expressly showed i was owed overtime

she told me to come in after the lawyer went home for the day and show her this folder, i did the next day and she looked stunned at the work i put into it, she took my research to her boss's boss and three days later i got a check in the mail signed by my former employee

the amount was for the exact value i had calculated in my logs, down to the penny

the story ends there, but if you wonder why i was fired, read on:

i was interviewing for a position to sell coffee at a major, yet private, cafe in manhattan, i got the job but in the course of working there for ten days i was promoted to a managerial position

i was running the main cafe and its four satellites throughout the island, doing everything from organising shifts to organising private parties, i did daily accounting at the main hub, and the full books at all the satellites

my quick promotions were the work of an employee whose job i was doing at the height of my employment, it was the holiday season and he wanted a three week vacation but was told he was too crucial to leave for so long, i was his plan out

by putting me in his position, while still expecting me to do the other positions i was already working, he was able to take his vacation

i am unsure what he thought would happen but when he came back i was kicking ass, and developing a rapport with the owner.. mind you, i had only been there ten days prior to taking the reigns so i was still very new to the company, when the old manager returned i was put into a 'positional limbo', the old manager led me on with promises of once he settled back in that i would run the satellites and he would only run the main hub, for three days i would come to work and do little things around the cafe and office that needed doing but everyone knew could go ignored, in those days the old manager had hired two new people into my catering job and my accounting position, again, with reassurances that i would get my managerial duties back running the satellites

on the third day the owner came in and i greeted him and asked if he'd be interested in opening a cafe in london because at the time i was interested in relocating there myself, he said it was the first time he'd thought about it, and he'd need some time to think about it more, but that he would

the next day i came into work and i was told i was fired, i asked why and the owner said the old manager 'no longer felt comfortable around me', i was stunned, just the day before we took our lunch break together.. this would be the last time i saw him, i told the owner this whole thing felt shitty, he apologised and explained the old manager had been there for five years and he had trust his opinion

in case there are any lingering thoughts on whether i did make the old manager uncomfortable stead it being some weird conspiracy that he felt his position was threatened by my presence or some such: i ordered a book off amazon, interestingly O'Reilly's 'Learning Perl, 6th Edition', since i was homeless, and spent all my time there anyway, i had my packages sent to the cafe, the book had yet to have arrived before my termination so after being fired i would periodically stop by and stick my head in to see if the book had arrived, after about three weeks the owner went from being friendly to thinking i was some insane holder on, weaving lies about 'a book', so that i could 'have an excuse' to come to the cafe, now i was getting emails from amazon saying the package had been delivered, i told the owner and he became furious trying to explain to me that the package was some delusion of mine, i went to the post office that checked the package in, and they had a signature from someone who had recieved the package at the cafe, it was the old manager's signature

i went back to the cafe and explained this and now the owner was threatening to call the police if i ever came back, i went back to the post office, explained the situation to them, they sent a representative, on his lunch break, the same day, and then called me later that day to tell me my package was waiting for me at the post office

when i went to claim it i was told the guy who went to the cafe to get the package wanted to personally give it to me, he came out smiling and told me everything happened as i explained it: first the owner yelled at him about how i was a crazy former employee, then claimed the package was a figment of my imagination; but then the postal worker showed him the signature, the owner then tore the office apart looking for it and concluded something must be off, that maybe i already had the package and was lying about it, at that point the old manager came back from his lunch break and the postal worker explained the situation to him, he denied having it, then the postal worker started threatening him with legal repercussions because i was claiming i had yet to have received the package but the post office had the mangager's signature for it, then the old manager apparently walked over to his filing cabinet, pulled the bottom drawer all the way out and took my boxed book out of from the behind all of the files, i am unsure of his fate after that, the postal worker said he was happy to get out of there and just took the box and left

i bought a plane ticket to london, two weeks in advance to avoid the price hike, and spent that two weeks up all night learning perl in Yaffa Cafe: bottomless coffee, open 24hrs, and free wifi

I hope you are doing fine now.

i'm guessing you are referring to the homeless aspect of my well being..

without sounding too much like an a hole: i was fine then too;

this was 8 years ago, i was traveling in france, i ran out of money but had a return flight, i landed in nyc with 40$ and i had a decision to make: do i call someone for some help or do i make it work?; i chose to make it work

when i was in india my understanding of poverty shifted dramatically, i even to this day say that the states are devoid of any poverty

the exploitation of individuals with less in the states seems hinged on flaws in our general system

i wanted to help both poverty of the world, and those disenchanted and alienated by the country that let me stay the longest without a visa.. my birthplace

but, i am really bad at helping other people,

what i am really good at is helping myself

institutionally or bureaucratically offering my services to provide aide often calls for me to perform tasks for goals that i already think are futile, or refuse to try new things due to established procedures and participant seniority and frustrate me to stop trying to help others, and individual help is time and emotionally consuming, only helps a single individual ignoring others' suffering, and ultimately feels manipulative

but! if i become homeless, if i am without a place to live and without a cent to my name, i was confident i could crawl my way out of that caste, what i found was living in public spaces made sense under certain circumstances, the first time around i spent 4 months in new york's underbelly, then a year later i came back for another 4 because i knew how to play the game.. and i could play it really well

one thing i learned in my time living on the streets of many cities around the world, and meeting and living alongside many people doing the same was that homelessness is a choice

i know this is an unpopular sentiment.. the best of the worst rationalisations these days seems to be 'mental illness', people without a clue love to say 'homelessness is a mental illness issue', somehow people have convinced themselves that there is compassion in undermining other peoples' choices

now, to say 'it is a choice' is a pithy simplification of a vastly complex idea: we need to determine what are bad choices both for individuals and for our collective happiness and comfort, and how to interact with people making those bad choices

we need to determine why the choice is being made, honestly a lot of the people i got to know or chose to avoid were just doing what they wanted to be doing and either our dominant society rejected them or they saw it as abhorrent and opted out of it: i need to do your work for you for a pittance of your benefiting off of said work in order to pay a monthly fee for a stronger box with a lock on it so i can collect things in it free of constant fear of it being taken from me when my guard is down? i think i'll just accept the consequences of living without employment then, those seem more manageable to me;

but i love being able to have a shower, it is really difficult to enjoy the rain when you are without a shower and dry clothes to go home to and i love to enjoy the rain

so that became my baseline: getting people jobs they already knew they were uninterested in having is ridiculous, but creating a culture where anyone can take a warm shower and get warm clothes when they are needed, now that is something.. so i dedicate my free time to dreaming up my favourite way to achieve this

o, and food, everyone needs food food should be free.. "When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?"(i) food will be free in the future

(i) http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/america

Are you still in London?

i lived in london many times in the last 8 years

right now, i'm in san francisco

This story deserves some editing and polishing to be published as a blog post/article.

When I worked in construction and restaurants, I saw people agree to work off the books (at the restaurants) and the construction companies would "bank" the overtime hours so they didn't have to pay time and a half, even though they were union companies. Scumbags both, plain and simple...

I'm left wondering how this missing overtime pay continue past the first short paycheck? I'd stop working overtime until it arrived.

So you'd be fired.

Unlikely that would be needed, but its a two-way contract, if either side doesn't meet their obligations, it can be canceled.

Certainly was with the Apple-Google deal, if we need a more relevant tech-related case.

Yeah, I know how they feel. I worked in the US for several years and something like a tenth of my salary was stolen by something called "Social Security".

Do I ever see any of that money again? Nope! Only if I work in the US for ten years do I have any hope of getting some money out of the Social Security system (if it's still going in its present form when I retire, which I doubt).

Before people get too worked up about this they should consider it from the other point of view.

If you're going to get strict about getting paid for every hour you work, you'd better believe I, as your employer, am going to start getting strict about making sure you're really working for every minute of those hours. No goofing off, no idle chit-chat, just work.

How many of us would be willing to be held up to this standard? I sure as hell wouldn't.

First of all, low level low pay employees are held up that standard you cite. They do not get breaks and other similar perks.

Second, I would much rather work 40 hours with very little chit-chat then mandatory 60 hours with 30 hours that time being wasted. I actually worked in such environment and liked it. I would note that it was team culture, not something enforced by a set of punishments.

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