Wage Theft: An American Epidemic

Unpaid wages are a huge problem for employees in California and the entire nation. Employers large and small routinely ignore laws that require them to pay certain employees time and a half for overtime hours as well as other laws regulating payment of their employees. Unpaid wages are a particular problem for the lowest wage workers who can least afford to have their rights violated by their employer.

Employers Are Not Properly Paying Their Wages in the United States

Unpaid compensation is a huge problem throughout the country for low wage earning workers who can least afford to be taken advantage of in this manner. A nationwide survey of lower-wage workers conducted in 2008 by staff members of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), a non-profit organization that assists workers in fighting for and advocating for their rights, found that 26% of low-wage workers surveyed were paid less than the minimum wage in the prior week and 76% of those who worked more than 40 hours in a week were not paid the legally required overtime rate of time and a half under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Incredibly, the NELP survey also found that more than two-thirds of low-wage workers had experienced at least one pay related violation by their employer in the previous work week alone. This resulted in the low wage workers surveyed losing an average of $2,634 each annually due to workplace unpaid wage law violations by their employers.

Unpaid Wages in California: A Particular Problem

Although unpaid wages are a problem throughout the entire country, wage theft is a particular problem in California. When the UCLA Labor Center and the NELP performed their own report of the problem of unpaid wages in California, their findings were just as shocking, if not more shocking than the figures discussed above: between 2008 and 2011, workers recovered only 42 percent of approximately $390 million in total unpaid wages verified as owed to these employees by California’s Department of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE), the agency charged with enforcing California’s pay and labor laws. The study also found that even when workers prevailed in obtaining judgments against their employers for unpaid wages, employees had difficulty collecting those amounts. For instance, the study found that only 17% of California workers who were successful in pursuing an unpaid wages claims before the DLSE were able to recover any money at all from their employer between 2008 and 2011. The report also found that, although the DLSE issued awards to employees for unpaid wages of more than $282 million between 2008 and 2011, California workers were able to collect a mere $42 million—roughly 15% —of those awards from their employers.

About Hekmat Law Group

Hekmat Law Group is a rights focused law firm founded in 2013 dedicated to fighting for employee and consumer rights. The firm represents employees in wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, unpaid wages and other employment matters as well as consumers ripped off through false advertising or other unfair (and unlawful) business practices. The firm has offices in Los Angeles, CA and New York, NY. For additional information, please visit HekmatLaw.com.

We have extensive experience representing employees who have not been paid the wages they are entitled to under the law.  If your employer refuses to properly compensate you for all the hours that you have worked, please contact us at 424-888-0848 to discuss your potential legal options today.