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the practice by an employer of not paying the proper wages due to a worker or workers, especially through paying inordinately low salaries or failing to abide by employment law and regulations.
What is Wage Theft?
Wage theft occurs when employers do not pay workers according to the law. Examples of wage theft include paying less than minimum wage, not paying workers overtime, not allowing workers to take meal and rest breaks, requiring off the clock work, or taking workers' tips.
I was once fired for union organizing. It was 1979 and I worked for a small local hardware wholesale/retail company. I was young, dumb and ignorant to what was necessary to accomplish making our company a union shop.
I grew up in a union household in the South. My dad was a Teamster and a one time shop steward. My dad was a shop steward before I was born, so talk of unions was natural around my house. In the early 60s, North Carolina was considered one of the most progressive states in the South, but when it came to its labor laws, North Carolina was still a right to work state.
In 1980 Ronald Reagan, a former union president, was elected President of the United States. When he took office, Ronald Reagan became one of the most anti-union Presidents ever. The most outward display of his anti-union stance was his mass firing of the striking air traffic controllers. From that point, union participation declined for decades. Not until the growth of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) did unions experience what could be called a rebirth.
With the decline in union participation, the U.S. also experienced a decline in the middle-class. The correlation was obvious even if there were those who chose to ignore the obvious. Today there are still those who would argue the point.
We’ve seen more and more called strikes in recent years and despite the claims of Corporate America of massive disruptions, we have learned we’ll survive. The massive disruptions are mostly to the bottom lines of the corporations and industries involved.
Support the WGA and the SAG-AFTRA strikes, the wages they’re fighting for may be yours in the future.
The inspiration for today’s post.