Exposing Wage Theft Without Fear: States Must Protect Workers from Retaliation

Posted by National Alliance for Fair Contracting on

NELP
June 24, 2019

Around the country, workers who speak up about workplace violations often face a significant risk of retaliation by their employer. Yet our 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. Government investigations or audits of employers are relatively rare. Retaliation is therefore one of the most pressing and persistent challenges to effective enforcement of our workplace laws-workers should not fear that their employer will punish them for asserting their rights. Ultimately, any law intending to protect workers’ rights must protect workers from retaliation in order to make that law a reality.

Why Do Workers Experience Retaliation?

  • Workers in the U.S. generally bear the burden of enforcing their own labor protections-it is up to them to come forward to report violations.
  • When a worker comes forward to report a workplace violation, we know that employers often retaliate or threaten to retaliate against the worker.
  • ·Under our current system, workers bear the entire risk of retaliation from their employer when they report violations.

What Does Retaliation Look Like?

  • Retaliation takes many shapes and can be difficult to pinpoint or prove. Employers, for example, may fire a worker, demote a worker, reduce a worker’s hours, change worker’s schedule to a less favorable one, subject a worker to new forms of harassment, unfairly discipline a worker, threaten to report a worker or a worker’s family member to immigration authorities, and much more.

What Does Retaliation Cost Workers?

  • When workers experience retaliation for trying to protect their rights, the costs can quickly escalate from both a financial and emotional standpoint, especially for the countless workers nationwide who live paycheck to paycheck. A worker may experience lost pay, for example, which can quickly lead to missed payments, lower credit scores, eviction, repossession of a car or other property, suspension of a license, inability to pay child support or taxes, attorney’s fees and costs, stress, trauma, and more.