Wage Theft in the Fast Food Industry - 1764 Words

Imagine having to clock out mid-shift to prevent getting paid overtime, but not leaving for another hour or two. Having to punch out for break but work through it, or having a paid vacation taken away as if it never existed? Situations relative to these are reality and are classified as wage theft, defined by the wage theft website as â€Å"a variety of infractions that occur when workers do not receive their legally or contractually promised wages† (Wage Theft). The public is generally uneducated of the concept of wage theft and the effects it has on our society, let alone what can be done about it. The Wage Theft Prevention Act, an act established in 2011 by the state of New York, provides laws protecting working citizens, and is an act that†¦show more content†¦economy, in an industry that’s making billions of dollars in record profits; and they’re stealing from the lowest income workers in this country. Is that right?!†. It is true- workers of these restaurants do not even make nearly enough to survive and are victims of wage theft while corporate workers make millions more a year, caring less about what is happening to the workers below them. In an article on AlterNet entitled â€Å"Fast-Food CEOs Making 1,200 Times Workers’ Wages Have No Idea What Their Greed Does To Employees† it revealed just how pathetic this industry really is. In the article by Alyssa Figueroa, she stated that â€Å"In the past decade, fast-food CEOs’ wages have increased more than 400 percent, while workers’ wages increased 0.3 percent†. In a later statement, â€Å"the average fast food CEO salary at $23.8 million in 2013 and the average worker salary at $19,000†. If we are a country that recognizes the issue of income inequality, why are we not doing anything in relation to this issue? The article featured numerous testimonies including many occurrences of wage theft. In a testimony by a woman named Marie Sanders, she states â€Å"I was 17 years old and I had problems at home, so I needed to budget my money in order to pay my expenses, I just stumbled upon it. I would ask my manager for printouts of my ti me. And that’s when I had noticed that I had been clocked out for days that I did not take breaks. And it would beShow MoreRelatedShould The Minimum Wage Be Paid?993 Words   |  4 PagesTalk poverty: As wages go down, the percentage of workers relying on public assistance gets higher: 60 percent of workers earning less than $7.42—only slightly higher than the $7.25 federal minimum wage—receive some form of means-tested public assistance. 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