Like a lot of other people, I have found myself laid off numerous times in the past 10 years.
The county cut me and about 90 other people in July of 2002 - Medicare cuts, don't you know.
I got another job a year later and it was pretty good in retrospect - a real company, real paychecks, always on time, healthcare access, vacation time - the works.
I wasn't happy with all the driving that job required and found a job in a small mental health center doing assessments and managed care paperwork. This job proved to be a nightmare pretty quickly - a supervisor less educated and experienced than me, a small, privately run place named after the owner, a lady with the same license I have now and 1/3 my experience.
They turned out to be unethical, going behind me on a complicated case that DID NOT MEET CRITERIA and altered what I wrote on my account and got the case authorized. I already hated the job and this was just not tolerable. I managed to get my job back at the previous company, which welcomed me back with a "Thank you Lord" because I am good at what I do and I am reliable.
I got married in October 2005. I got laid off in November 2005, after the company lost their contract.
I got on quickly with another similar agency but then was offered what seemed like a better job - no driving all over the place, an office, a desk, managed care paper to chase. That lasted a little over a year. I had negotiated a $40k salary and they hired me an assistant and such. After 2 assistants, working for a fraction of what I was paid, learned the ropes, I was gone, two-fered as the boss replaced me with 2 lesser-payed people (both of whom are also gone now.)
Things went from bad to worse, delivering pizzas because nobody wanted to talk to me without a license. Overqualified. Long story short, I got my license and I was off to the races.
Or so it seemed. the first 3 agencies I worked for either had difficulties making payroll, or they were flat-out dicking me - and many others - around.
The first place lasted about 3 months. I busted my ass driving 200 miles a day seeing people in their homes and watching the paychecks be wrong, short and the boss - whom I knew and worked with elsewhere - was unresponsive. I quit and got another job. The checks seemed OK at first then started being late, then wrong, then never ever on time and they - oddly enough - couldn't keep professional staff. I became so stressful and horrible I quit without another job lined up.
I got a call form a 'high-level law enforcement agency' asking me to talk with them about that first agency. Seems they were engaging in Medicaid fraud.I believe at least one other agency I had worked for did the Medicad fraud thing, as well as not pay me right. It is rampant.
Then I come across the following article at AlterNet.
Wage Theft Is Rampant in America -- Is Your Boss Ripping You off?
The article is focused mostly on construction and immigrant labor issues where people are ripped off systematically. There is nothing in it about what I wrote above, but the issue is widespread. Busting your ass and not getting paid is heinous.
The full extent of employer cheating is not known. But one study shows that in New York City alone, workers are cheated out of more than $18 million a week.
Another study, covering more than 4,000 workers in Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as New York, found that more than one-fourth of the workers had been paid less than the minimum wage. That and other employer violations cut their paychecks, which averaged about $300 a week, by more than $50.
Not only does it SUCK to work hard and not get paid, not get paid correctly and/or on time.
It is doubtlessly a capitalist dream - free labor - but ripping off the workers RIPS OFF THE ECONOMY!
It's not just the cheated workers who are harmed. We are all harmed, notes former Obama White House adviser Van Jones, since wage theft "keeps lawfully earned pay from being spent where it will do the most to strengthen our economy."
With my checks being a week, weak and a half late, missing $100 here and $150 there, I could never keep up with bills, let alone BUY THINGS.
I have talked to a number of professionals in my field and all of them have similar stories to tell and I have never ever heard of one of these miserable employers getting so much as a slap on the wrist for it.
I have a buddy who is lanuishing at a job that is fucking with his money as well. He's got 2 kids and is divorced due to his wife's numbskull infidelity. He's got so much stress on him, he doesn't need to be dicked aroung on his money after he busts his ass.
NOBODY SHOULD.
If you do not get paid, you do NOT have a job.
If you have a job and you are not getting paid then you are getting robbed.
I sure wish something would be done to stomp down hard on these non-paying assholes.
The movement to enact similar laws elsewhere has been growing, most importantly in Congress, where a proposed national law has been introduced.
The Labor Department has meanwhile stepped up enforcement of the current law against wage theft, using public service announcements, a Web site and a telephone hot line to encourage workers to report employers who cheat.
I have never seen these ads and I have never heard of the hot line - I would have worn that thing out.
866-4US-WAGE (487-9243)
More Reading:
Labor-Religion Campaign of New York State
Wage Theft in America: The Crime Wave No One Talks About
Wage Theft in America: A Crisis We Can Solve (AFL-CIO)