Catholic News Service |Mark Pattison
February 21, 2020

A rising tide lifts all boats, according to the popular economic adage.

But what if the reverse also is true? What happens when wages are depressed, and illegally so?

The Catholic Labor Network, based in Washington, is testing that theory right now through its Mid-Atlantic Construction Wage Theft Project. It has sent a man to construction sites in Maryland and the District of Columbia to talk to workers to learn who hired them and how much they’re getting paid.

Ernesto Galeas, who has gone to the job sites, said a growing number of builders are going through labor brokers to obtain workers. The brokers get their fee – and, according to Galeas, the workers get about $10 an hour with no overtime, no Social Security, no worker’s compensation and no health insurance. …

In a February phone interview with Catholic News Service, Galeas said: “In every job that I visit, most of them have labor brokers in drywall, carpentry, siding, plumbing, electricians. I would say that of 10 jobs, eight of them are under labor brokers.”
While labor brokers were more common in new-home construction, it has spread to commercial development, he added. …

The attorney general’s office in the District of Columbia levied fines this winter totaling roughly $3.25 million against three firms found to have violated the city’s wage-theft law. Some of that money will go to workers as back pay. Two of the three companies specialize in drywall hanging and electrical work.

D.C.’s Workplace Fraud Act, which applies to the construction industry, requires companies to classify most workers as employees. Those who violate the law can face significant fines. Maryland has a similar bill, hence the Catholic Labor Network’s focus there with its wage-theft initiative. …

California passed the Private Attorneys General Act, which allows workers to stand in the shoes of their state’s labor department and seek civil penalties for wage theft; they also generate millions in new revenue for state enforcement agencies, expanding their capacity to root out wage theft. Such legislation also has been proposed in New York, Oregon, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont and Washington. …

A 2017 study by the Economic Policy Institute found wage theft “causes many families to fall below the poverty line, and it increases workers’ reliance on public assistance, costing taxpayers money. Lost wages can hurt state and local economies, and it hurts other workers in affected industries by putting downward pressure on wages.”

In examining the 10 most populous states, which hold a bit more than half the U.S. population, wage theft comes to more than $8 billion a year. “If the findings for these states are representative for the rest of the country, they suggest that the total wages stolen from workers due to minimum wage violations exceeds $15 billion each year,” the report said.

Just how much is that? David Cooper, a senior analyst at the Economic Policy Institute and co-author of the report, told CNS that “when you look at the amount of wage theft that takes place, it’s significantly more than the value of property theft.” The report quotes FBI statistics from 2015 that show the combined value of money and property stolen in robberies, burglaries, larceny and motor vehicle theft in the United States was $12.7 billion.

“The magnitude,” Cooper said, “is a lot larger than people think.”

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