One of every five low-wage workers in El Paso makes less than minimum wage, while close to 80 percent earn less than $10 an hour, according to a first-of-its-kind study released on Thursday.  "El Paso's Newest Crime Wave: A Wage Theft Epidemic in the Borderlands" was released Thursday at the Border Network for Human Rights Center by the three nonprofit groups that commissioned it.  "The numbers show that wage theft is very prevalent," said Maria Cristina Morales, a professor from Texas A&M University, who conducted the groundbreaking study with Eric Murillo, founder and co-organizer of the Retail Workers Rights Committee.

"It was not something we had to work very hard to find."  Volunteers from the three advocacy groups surveyed more than 250 low-income workers on streets, at bus stops and in community meetings.  A low-income worker is an employee who makes less than the "livable wage." In El Paso, the "livable wage" is $7.26 an hour for a single person and $15.26 for an adult with a single child.  "As the number of dependents goes up, the livable wage gets higher," said Morales.

She presented the study results during a joint news conference hosted by the Paso del Norte Civil Rights Project, the Labor Justice Committee and the Border Network for Human Rights.
The study also found that nearly two-thirds of low-wage workers do not receive overtime pay.  "A lot of times, these workers don't even know what overtime pay is," Morales said.
The three groups said that low-income workers are vulnerable to wage theft; that's when employers withhold payments.
Some cases of wage theft occur when employees are misrepresented as independent contractors, which denies them certain rights and benefits. (click on link to read full story)