Iowa Daily Democrat: Stolen chances: Low-wage work and wage theft in Iowa

[Omaha Steve]

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Report, survey stress persistent problem and inaction on wage theft.

http://iowadailydemocrat.com/news/2015/09/stolen-chances-low-wage-work-and-wage-theft-in-iowa/

Reprinted with permission of the Iowa Policy Project.

Iowa City, Iowa – As we approach Labor Day 2015, many Iowans — those who work at jobs that provide little security, those who are not paid the wages they have earned — will not be celebrating.

“Despite three years of heightened attention — from our work, from media reports, and from some policymakers — wage theft remains persistent in Iowa,” said Colin Gordon, author of a new report for the nonpartisan Iowa Policy Project (IPP).

“The state’s landscape of lax enforcement remains fundamentally unaltered, and new evidence presented in this report underscores the stubborn and broad scope wage theft. In fact, many still may not realize they are being robbed,” said Gordon, a history professor at the University of Iowa and senior research consultant to IPP.

Gordon’s new report for the nonpartisan Iowa Policy Project, available at www.iowapolicyproject.org, expands on a 2012 report that estimated wage theft to be a $600 million problem in Iowa. It examines new data on wage complaints, based in part on a survey of low-wage workers conducted by the Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa (CWJ), and it places Iowa’s wage theft crisis against a broad backdrop of low-wage and precarious employment.

FULL story at link.