Demonstrators are pictured in front of Domino's Pizza during a strike aimed at the fast-food industry and the minimum wage in Seattle, Washington August 29, 2013. Fast-food workers went on strike and protested outside restaurants in 60 U.S. cities on Thur
Minimum-wage violations are, for instance, suuuper common in fast food.
Steven Greenhouse shows why it's such a shame he's leaving the New York Times (more on that below), with a story on what he politely calls "minimum-wage violations" and others would call wage theft:
The United States Labor Department says that a new study shows that between 3.5 and 6.5 percent of all the wage and salary workers in California and New York are paid less than the minimum wage. [...]
The minimum-wage violations in those two states translate into $20 million to $29 million in lost income per week, the study concluded. Those amounts represent 38 percent of the income of the victimized workers in New York and 49 percent of the income of victimized workers in California.
This has material consequences, as workers who are not paid what they are legally owed are impoverished by these violations of wage laws, and are in turn forced to rely more heavily on government assistance. There's also a fundamental question of respect, for the workers and their time, and for the laws of this nation that say employers are required to pay the minimum wage and, where applicable, overtime.
And we need more reporters covering stories like this instead of centering economic reporting on bosses and billionaires, which is why—circling back to where I started—it's such a shame to see the Times lose Greenhouse.