Maybe you’ve realized: You’re being robbed.

But it’s no burglar; it’s not at gunpoint. Your tips are stolen by your boss, or you regularly work 50 hours a week with no overtime pay, or you’re handed cash at the job site that’s less than friends make on similar projects.

What will you do?

Such “wage theft” isn’t your imagination; it’s real and rising, robbing individuals and the country.
“It has been estimated that low-wage workers lose more than $50 billion annually to wage theft,” reported the Economic Policy Institute –– money not spent on housing, food, education, healthy consumer goods, transportation, etc.

On May 11, the Illinois Department of Labor (DoL) released a pile of wage-theft notices of violations committed by employers in Amboy, Quincy, Mahomet and other areas with amounts assessed between $2,316,24 to almost $1 million.

“That’s one of the largest in state history,” says Dane Simpson of the nonprofit Midwest Region Foundation for Fair Contracting, a non-government group that advocates for construction workers whose employers have violated wage laws.

DoL documents show that Global Wind Service US, based in Chicago, underpaid workers $798,757.71 on a McLean County project and was penalized $111,826.08, totaling $910,583.79.

The U.S. Department of Labor has also found area violations, such as East Peoria’s Tequila’s Mexican Bar and Grill, which faced a federal judge’s 2019 injunction after Labor’s Wage and Hour Division said it owed $27,155 to 20 workers.

Simply, wage theft is the failure to pay workers the wages owed to them under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act or state laws mandating hourly pay.

Illinois has six compliance officers. They respond to about 1,000 complaints a year in a state with 6.1 million workers, a 1/100 of a percent ratio, meaning there are few violations or a reluctance to complain.

“While most employers in our communities do right by their workers, too many do not,” reported the National Employment Law Project (NELP). “Being paid less than the minimum wage, being shorted hours, being forced to work off the clock, not being paid overtime, or not being paid at all are pervasive practices across many industries.”

About 30 states have fewer than 10 investigators to deal with wage violations, according to a nine-month investigation by Politico. And there are fewer than 1,000 investigators at the federal Wage and Hour Division.

“The feds pretty much focus on national work,” Simpson says, “like contract work for NASA, the Army Corps of Engineers and special situations.”

Employers steal from workers in construction, restaurants, domestic work and other jobs by forcing employees to work through lunch, subcontracting work to smaller firms, or illegally classifying them as managers or “independent contractors” not entitled to regular compensation.

“Misclassification is everywhere,” Simpson says, “and it’s obvious if you answer simple questions like: Do you control how you do your work? Do you have to attend meetings or be trained? Do you supply your own equipment or use the employer’s?”

Overall, then, the risk to employer thieves is low, as are most penalties.

“Some companies are doing a cost-benefit analysis and realize it’s cheaper to violate the law, even if you get caught,” reported the Center for Public Integrity

Readers may think, “How am I affected? No one’s cheating me.”

Wage theft affects everyone: workers, taxpayers, local economies, and honest employers trying to compete with cheating companies.

When workers are paid less, the consumer economy gets less spending, and tax revenues decline in sales and payroll taxes funding Social Security, unemployment and workers compensation.

Still, many exploited workers don’t complain due to confusion or fear. Some bosses take advantage of helpful workers; some jobs have arbitration clauses limiting how workers can seek reparation; some companies threaten dissatisfied workers.

“Laws generally place the burden on workers to come forward and report violations, either through complaints filed with enforcement agencies or through lawsuits filed in state or federal court,” said NELP attorney Laura Hulzar.

“Government investigations or audits of employers are relatively rare. Retaliation is therefore one of the most pressing and persistent challenges.”

Responses are required.

“Wages are far too low to begin with, so when money is stolen right out of workers’ paychecks, we have to have effective tools in place to get that money back,” U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, has said.

Reforms have happened in a few places, including Illinois, but still needed are more national and state resources to adequately enforce laws; fines, especially for repeat offenders; damages beyond back pay violators paying victims’ legal fees; empowering government to file pre-judgment property claims against employers to prevent companies from escaping responsibility through bankruptcy; and better protection against employer retaliation.

Illinois is one of the first states to enact protection against reprisals. In addition to an employer fine of $2,500 and/or imprisonment for up to a year, the law entitles workers with the right to monetary damages in addition to lost pay (through an administrative process or litigation), a right to recover attorney’s fees and costs in a private suit, and a right to bring a retaliation complaint to a government agency and to court, Hulzar said.

However, it’s limited to those who go directly to government officials, Simpson says.

“Unlike a lot of states that make you file claims only with the state, Illinois permits third-party complaints like ours,” Simpson says. “But whistleblower protections only cover workers who go to government agencies.”

Nevertheless, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul told Congress about state worker protection divisions granted jurisdiction over wage theft, testifying, “My office fields hundreds of complaints from working people across Illinois who don’t know how they will pay their rent or feed their families because they have not been paid all of their wages.

“Not only is this unfair to workers, it harms other businesses that do comply with wage laws by making them less able to compete.”

He pushed a measure that took affect last year creating a Worker Protection Task Force and Worker Protection Unit within the Office of the Illinois Attorney General “to intervene in, initiate, enforce and defend all criminal or civil legal proceedings on [such] matters.”

Meanwhile, Springfield lawmakers are discussing a bill raising the amount of damages victims of wage theft can collect, from 2% to 5%. It was approved 68-44 by the House in April and in May was approved by the Senate Labor Committee 12-5 for consideration by the full Senate.

If national or state officials don’t act, local prosecutors could take action to seek civil or criminal remedies for justice and to deter employer misconduct.

In fact, prosecutors in Austin, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and San Francisco have started prosecuting wage theft as property crime.

Further, Illinois’ local prosecutors can pursue cases under Raoul’s bill. In fact, his office met with county prosecutors in January to pursue such collaborations.

“Partnerships between government and prosecutors will help us better fight wage theft and other unlawful employment practices that harm employees and law-abiding businesses,” Raoul said. “The Worker Protection Unit Task Force will improve our ability to protect the men and women who deserve fair compensation.”

There’s concern about the problem nationwide. If wage theft isn’t tackled, “then any efforts to raise the minimum wage, strengthen overtime, or protect workers’ tips are ineffectual,” said U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va.

Yet some see wage theft as a relatively new term for a sudden phenomenon. It’s not. The old name? Slavery.

Options to seek justice

• Illinois Department of Labor has a toll-free number –– 800-478-3998 –– and an online process to report wage theft.
• The Illinois Attorney General’s Worker Protection unit can be called toll-free at 844-740-5076.
• The federal Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has a toll-free helpline: 866-487-9243.
• Also, for construction workers, there are several Foundations for Fair Contracting throughout the state.