Wage Theft in Kentucky Costs More Than All Other Robbery Combined

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http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/joshua-holland/58239/wage-theft-in-kentucky-costs-more-than-all-other-robbery-combined

Wage Theft in Kentucky Costs More Than All Other Robbery Combined
Worker's Rights
by Joshua Holland | September 11, 2014 - 11:47am
— from Moyers & Company

Last week, the Kentucky Labor Cabinet released a report which found that the “money taken each year in Kentucky during all robberies combined falls well short of the total amount of wages improperly withheld from Kentucky’s workers.”

The agency collects an average of $4.5 million every year from employers as restitution for ripping off their workers. According to the report, losses from all other forms of theft in the Bluegrass State amount to around $2 million. “You hear about robberies on the news all the time, but wage theft is a bigger problem,” said Labor Cabinet Secretary Larry Roberts in a press release. “Wage theft happens every day in Kentucky, and it impacts numerous industries and multiple types of workers.”

“Wage theft” is defined as an employer not paying workers money that they’ve clearly earned. Paying less than the legal minimum wage, not compensating employees for the full number of hours they worked and not paying overtime are all forms of wage theft.

The numbers released by the Kentucky Labor Cabinet most likely only scratch the surface of the problem because states and localities tend to devote scant resources to enforcing wage and hour laws. The Census Bureau’s most recent survey, in 2008, found that Kentucky had 389 law enforcement agencies employing over 10,000 law enforcement personnel. That’s a cop for every 243 residents. But there are just 15 wage and hour field inspectors policing the state’s 1.9 million wage earners. That’s just one enforcement official for every 126,600 workers.