Over the course of a year, employers will “steal” more than $2,000 from their minimum wage workers in Los Angeles, according to a study recently completed by the UCLA Institute of Research on Labor and Employment. The report, “Wage Theft and Workplace Violations in Los Angeles: The Failure of Employment and Labor Law for Low-Wage Workers,” by Ruth Milkman, Ana Luz Gonzales and Victor Narro, found that figure breaks down to about $40 per week. “Forty dollars is a bag of groceries; it’s enough to keep the lights on or pay a phone bill,” said Lola Smallwood-Cueves. “This is why it is very important to ensure that workers’ rights are respected, and they are protected in every way we can.”
 

Smallwood-Cueves is coordinator of the Los Angeles Black Worker Center and a project director at the UCLA Labor Center. She noted that African Americans are particularly vulnerable to this problem because many of them work in low-wage or under-regulated industries such as janitorial/building service, security officers, warehouse workers, home health/childcare, and restaurants. Smallwood-Cueves defines wage theft as the “amount of money that workers lose, when employers don’t follow labor laws and fail to pay them.” Among the ways this happens, said the center coordinator, is that employers may ask employees to work off the clock before or after their shift. The report found that 52.8 percent of African Americans who worked more than 40 hours in the week previous to the 2008 survey, had worked “off the clock” and had not been compensated for that work. Also, 58.1 percent were not paid the legally required rate of time-and-a-half for overtime. (click on link to read full story)