By Keith Ellison, Union Advocate
April 29, 2019

Frankly, I was shocked.

Here I was, listening to a man through an interpreter describe how the paycheck that he worked so hard for at fairly low wages was delivered to him in a debit card. He didn’t get a regular paycheck or a check stub of any kind: he was told that this debit card represented his pay and that the pay had been deposited for him.

It was hard for him to figure out how much he had actually gotten paid. When he did, he found that he had lost as many as three days’ wages even though he had worked hard every single day.

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These folks are all victims of wage theft. Wage theft takes many forms: having hours shaved off your paycheck; being forced to work off the clock; not getting paid for overtime; being paid at a lower rate than promised, sometimes below minimum wage; being paid in cash or other forms, with no Social Security, unemployment, or worker’s comp withheld; being misclassified as an independent contractor; and more.

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I was also shocked at the frequency with which wage theft happens. Reputable studies from several years ago estimate that two-thirds of all low-wage workers in the country have experienced at least one form of wage theft. The amount of wages stolen each year in Minnesota may be in the hundreds of millions of dollars: nationally, the Economic Policy Institute has estimated that $50 billion a year is stolen in wage theft. That’s more than three times the value of all the goods stolen through robbery, burglary, larceny and auto theft combined.

Those estimates are 5-10 years old now. In an economy that’s gotten more and more predatory, it’s surely only gotten worse.

One reason people don’t know wage theft happens is because employers often retaliate or threaten to retaliate against people who report it. Another reason is that wage theft commonly happens in the shadows, to the most vulnerable among us, especially immigrants, people of color, and young people. African American workers are three times more likely to have had their wages stolen than white workers, and Latina/o workers are four times more likely. The predators who steal from these folks do so because they figure they’re the least likely to report it.

Too often, wage theft is connected to criminal abuse. According to human-rights advocates, every case of human trafficking also involves wage theft. If you find people being trafficked, you’ll find people whose wages are being stolen. That’s happening right here: in Hennepin County, a contractor has been charged with human trafficking, insurance fraud, and undocumented wage theft. The charges claim that “he knew the men that he had employed were undocumented workers and used that knowledge as leverage to force them to work long hours for less than market pay and without adequate safety protection,” and that “when workers were injured, he told his employees that they would lose their jobs and be deported if they sought medical attention.”

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– Keith Ellison has been serving as Minnesota’s Attorney General since January 7, 2019. As the People’s Lawyer, his job is to help Minnesotans afford their lives and live with dignity and respect. Before becoming Attorney General, he represented Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives for 12 years.

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