The calls come every week.

"Hello, my name is Ernesto," "Me llamo Rosa," "I am Enrique, and I wonder if you can help," callers begin.

Their accents are thick. Their voices sound angry and vulnerable. And their messages are the same: They've been ripped off, robbed of their pay in a crime wave nobody talks about.

"All I have is my labor. And my labor's been stolen," Manuel Ruiz told me. "I thought the people should know."

As a rule, I try to avoid writing about issues with designated days. National Lefthanders Day, Eating Disorders Awareness Day and the National Day of Listening, for example, will get no space in this column.

But Ruiz is right. People should know. So today, the National Day of Action to Stop Wage Theft, is an exception.

Wage theft means denying pay, often to undocumented workers who are the least likely to speak out.

In Ruiz's case, wage theft involved a landscaping company that agreed to pay him $10 an hour. He raked, bagged and hauled leaves for 18 days straight this fall until he realized his boss had no intention of paying him.

In Rosa Trujillo's case, wage theft meant cleaning houses for a company in Littleton with a promise of $80 a day. She mopped floors for a week and a half until she asked for her earnings, and her manager stopped returning her calls.

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