Transcriber:
When you work,
you expect to be paid for it.
You don't expect to be paid
less than you were promised
or worse, nothing at all.
But that's exactly what's happening
to millions of Americans
who work in a range of industries.
It's especially a problem in agriculture,
construction, restaurants,
garment factories, poultry plants,
nursing homes, in day labor
and among independent contractors.
It's called wage theft,
and chances are that you
or someone you know has experienced it.
Wage theft occurs
when individuals do not receive
their legally owed wages and benefits.
Wage theft can take many forms:
Paying below the minimum wage,
withholding earned benefits,
overtime, breaks or tips,
misclassifying employees
as independent contractors
and even outright non-payment.
The Economic Policy Institute
estimates that workers are losing
50 billion dollars a year to wage theft,
but most people haven't even
heard of the problem.
If it's hard to picture
50 billion dollars, consider this.
Yearly economic losses to auto theft,
robbery and burglary combined
come to much less at 14 billion a year.
Wage theft impacts more
than just the workers
who don't get their wages.
It lowers wages in those workplaces
and across entire industries.
Plus, it robs communities of tax dollars.
And even more broadly,
it rewards cheating,
undermines competition
and creates a race to the bottom
that hurts us all.
Although wage theft impacts
many industries,
my research focuses on one
of the most vulnerable sectors,
day laborers,
most of whom are immigrants
from Latin America
who seek daily work for cash.
You may have seen day laborers
at a worker center,
outside a home improvement store
or on a street corner.
On a typical morning
at a street corner hiring site,
trucks screech to a halt
and employers yell out
how many workers they need
and the pay rate
and workers rush
to the passenger-side window.
Day laborers may just have
a couple of minutes
to negotiate their wages,
hours and working conditions,
all in competition with other workers
and frequently with limited
English proficiency.
This rapid pace of the hiring process,
unstable work,
lack of immigration status
and working on one of the least regulated
sectors of the economy
makes day laborers particularly
vulnerable to wage theft,
as well as other forms of exploitation,
harassment and victimization.
Since 2015, my research has focused
on immigrant day laborers' experiences
with wage theft in Colorado.
I've also trained teams
of graduate students as field workers
and taken them out to street corners
and Denver's worker center
El Centro Humanitario.
In total, we interviewed 170 day laborers
and conducted a follow-up
survey of over 400.
Day laborer Bernal's story
demonstrates how wage theft happens.
Bernal was recruited
at a street corner hiring site
in Denver, Colorado, by an employer
who then drove him 70 miles away
for a construction project.
Bernal worked from nine in the morning
until late at night.
When the work was completed,
his employer didn't pay him.
What's more,
he stranded him in the parking lot
over an hour from home.
The employer told him,
"Tomorrow I'll come back and pay you,
I didn't bring any money."
When Bernal insisted on being paid,
the employer relented and gave me a check.
But when Bernal went to cash that check,
it had no funds.
So then he was stuck
with a bounced check fee
on top of his unpaid wages.
Bernal's story shows the many ways
employers try to cheat workers
out of their wages.
They strand them far from home.
They promise to pay later.
They claim they don't have
the money to pay.
Or they issue checks
with insufficient funds.
Employers often say
that wage theft is an accident,
but day laborers’ experiences
show how it’s a patterned
and intentional practice
to benefit at worker's expense.
Sadly, Bernal's story is not unique.
My survey results found
that 62 percent of day laborers
had experienced wage theft
and 19 percent just in the six months
prior to being surveyed.
When day laborers try to confront
employers for their unpaid wages,
they may stop answering the phone,
change their numbers
or even threaten the worker.
Because day laborers work
informally and off the books,
some employers,
they claim to have never hired
the worker at all.
Some employers vaguely or even directly
threaten to call immigration
when workers speak up or complain.
This is illegal, but employers
get away with it anyway.
That's because retaliation
protections are weak
and immigrant day laborers
don't tend to come forward
because they don't trust
the system to protect them.
US wage and hour laws require employers
to pay wages for all work completed,
regardless of legal status.
Otherwise, there's a perverse
incentive to cheat.
However, the labor rights
enforcement system is under-resourced
and largely depends on individuals
to come to it to pursue cases.
That's a big ask for anyone
and especially for vulnerable
populations like day laborers.
Not only does it take a good amount
of legal knowledge
to even know where to begin,
but there's also a steep opportunity cost.
Day laborers worry about spending days,
weeks, months, even years,
chasing unpaid wages,
when they could just be out
working the next job.
They also worry about retaliation.
That's why many workers never file
or give up their claims.
As many workers said,
they don't want to go around fighting.
So wage theft continues
because employers know
they're likely to get away with it.
That doesn't mean that day laborers
do nothing to prevent wage theft
or try to upgrade
their working conditions.
At street corners,
day laborers try to organize
a wage floor to prevent undercutting
and warn workers of employers
with bad reputations when they walk by.
For example, they shout,
"This one doesn't pay"
to blacklist employers
who mistreated workers in the past.
Other strategies include
only accepting cash, not cheques,
and insisting on getting paid every day,
rather than waiting for employers
who promise to pay
at the end of the week
or even bimonthly.
Still, day laborers recognize
that due to lack of work
and employer's relative power over them,
that there's no guarantee.
Only half of day laborers
who had experienced wage theft
did anything to recover
their unpaid wages,
including even asking their employer
for the money they owed them.
Just a third took the additional step
of seeking assistance from others.
As many workers told me
and student researchers,
there's nothing you can do.
Every year, when I collaborate
with students on this project,
some students tell me that they realize
that they too have experienced wage theft.
They're in quite different positions
than immigrant day laborers,
but also work in industries
that are prone to wage theft,
such as childcare,
restaurants, bars
and in low-paying and unpaid internships.
In fact, half a million Coloradans
suffer wage theft every year.
The nature of work is changing.
We've seen it in the rise of freelancing,
independent contracting,
piece rate and part-time work
and contingent work.
Not only has there been
a resurgence of day labor,
but more jobs look increasingly
a lot like day labor,
even if that's not
what we would call them.
Of course, there's a lot of flexibility
and competitiveness
that comes from these new kinds of jobs.
But there also can be risks
when they're also increasingly
characterized by low pay,
no benefits, job insecurity,
lack of employer responsibility
and are primed for labor violations
like wage theft.
They may be further prone
to labor practices
that are quite harmful and humiliating,
but perfectly legal.
US labor laws are still based
on relatively traditional definitions
and relationships between employers
and their employees.
Work arrangements that increasingly carve
workers out of employee status,
not only lessen employer's
responsibilities,
but make it all the more challenging
to hold them accountable
for labor violations,
as well as unsafe working conditions.
Wage theft is not exceptional.
It's just one more way
we've undermined workers
in the name of profit and flexibility.
It's critical to update
labor rights enforcement
to better evolve towards
the changing nature of work.
But that's not enough.
We also need to rethink
and upgrade employment
so that people's work
can actually support their lives.
And when we look for contractors
to remodel our homes,
look for childcare
or eat out in restaurants,
we need to ask more questions,
not just about the quality
of a job or a service,
or even where the ingredients
in our food come from,
but also attuned to how
workers are being paid
and being treated.
When we see rapid
construction growth in our cities,
we see signs of development
and of progress.
But we should also ask
for whom and at what cost.
The insecurity and risks of day labor
should worry all of us,
about the future of work.
Unless we transform our approach
to whose lives and labor matter.
Thank you.