The rampant injustice plaguing manual laborers compelled New Orleans City Council President Arnie Fielkow to promote an ordinance that would make wage theft a criminal act. Fielkow announced his support of the measure on the steps of City Hall.

Research conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Alabama, revealed that laborers in New Orleans suffered more from wage theft and other forms of abuse than anywhere else in the Southeastern U.S.

The SPLC report – Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South, “documents the human toll of failed policies that relegate millions of people to an underground economy, where they are beyond the protection of the law,” said Mary Bauer, author of the report and director of the SPLC’s Immigrant Justice Project.

“Workplace abuses and racial profiling are rampant in the South,” Bauer said.

According to the Times-Picayune, Councilman Fielkow promised to hold hearings on the issue of wage theft later this month. Fielkow also added that he has a panel of legal experts reviewing current laws to see how they can be improved, saying he seeks an ordinance “with teeth.”

Unless they are somehow connected to an advocacy group, many Latino workers in New Orleans have little to no recourse in recovering stolen wages. Workers who complain to authorities are often reported to immigration officials.

The Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor is in charge of enforcing Fair Labor Standards laws, including cracking down on wage theft. However, last year, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Wage and Hour Division’s enforcement of FLSA laws dropped to record lows in the past decade.

Most abused by employers were FLSA regulations guaranteeing minimum wage and overtime compensation. Abuse of the laws grew while enforcement of the laws shrank, creating what wage theft activist Kim Bobo called a “national crisis at this moment in our nation” to the tune of $19 billion per year in unpaid overtime alone.

Interfaith Worker Justice, a worker advocacy organization founded by Bobo, held its annual 2009 Leadership Summit at Tulane University in New Orleans earlier this week. Highlights of the 3-day program included seminars devoted to faith and labor laws, immigration issues, and the wage theft crisis.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › New Orleans is ‘Ground Zero’ of national wage theft epidemic

The proposed labor bill would establish a standard 8-hour work day for agricultural workers. Employers would pay workers overtime for all hours worked in excess of 8 hours. Additionally, workers would be entitled to enjoy one day of rest per week during the harvest season, they would be permitted to form unions, and they would have access to workers’ compensation and unemployment benefits.

Employers would also have to meet basic health standards in the living and working conditions they provide to laborers.

In a perfect world, such laws would be unnecessary because employers could always be counted on to look after their employees and treat them fairly and ethically.

Unfortunately, the health and well-being of workers often comes last, and laborers desperate for work are often easily exploited by their employers. The economic downturn has exacerbated the tendency to exploit, amounting to what activist Kim Bobo calls an “epidemic of wage theft” in America and “a crime wave no one talks about.”

Bobo, who founded the watchdog organization Interfaith Worker Justice, says that “agriculture, poultry processing, janitorial services, restaurant work, garment manufacturing, long term care, home health care and retail are the industries with the most reported cases of wage theft” in the United States.

Still, some New York farmers worry that the bill would hurt farms on many different levels, from raising production costs to losing a competitive edge.

The Times Union, however, says these arguments are merely theoretical  and that other states have successfully implemented similar labor laws.

“New York cannot let such speculative arguments justify underpaying and overworking people and denying them at least a day of rest. We share the view of many advocates that the perceived harms are being greatly overstated, and that the industry and the consumer will absorb the costs as they have in other states such as California,” the Times Union said.

Even the most basic standards, the Times Union points out, “have been under assault for years. The last time the minimum wage was high enough to keep a person who worked 40 hours a week out of poverty was the early 1980s.”

The editorial also noted that earlier in the decade, some lawmakers on Capitol Hill pushed for a 50-hour work week before overtime kicked in.

“It is troubling enough at any time to have lawmakers debate whether only some people should have the same protections from what amounts to exploitation, intentional or not, as others,” the Times Union said.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › New York bill to protect farm laborers stalls

Smith’s restaurant in Bolivar will pay more than $36,000 in fines and back wages stemming from its violations of the FLSA’s overtime, minimum wage, and child labor regulations. $34,625 of the money recovered by the Wage and Hour Division will compensate 54 employees for back wages.

Investigators found the restaurant had violated minimum wage laws by skimming money from the servers’ hourly pay to compensate bus staff. The restaurant also paid regular wages to ten hourly employees for time worked over 40 hours per workweek, which constitutes a violation of the FLSA standards for overtime pay.

The restaurant had to pay nearly $1,500 in penalties to the Labor Department for allowing employees under 18 years old to work more than three hours on school days and past 9 p.m. during the summer.  The FLSA prohibits workers under age 18 from working more than three hours on school days (18 hours per week) and eight hours on days with no school (40 hours per week). Minors may not work work later than 7 p.m. when school is in session or 9 p.m. during summer break.

The restaurant has cooperated fully with the Department of Labor, reports the Bolivar Herald-Free Press.

“The Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division is committed to protecting the rights of workers by ensuring that they receive the wages to which they are entitled,” James Koren, Kansas City district director of the Wage and Hour Division, told the Bolivar Herald-Free Press.

“Also, the department’s child labor provisions serve to strike a balance among providing invaluable work experience to our nation’s youth, safety and educational responsibilities,” he said.

SOURCE: Fair Labor Standards Act › Missouri restaurant pays back wages and penalties for FLSA violations