Check, Please! Workers, Activists Nationwide Take Action Against Wage Theft

[Omaha Steve]

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6681/check_please_nationwide_day_of_action_against_wage_theft/

Thursday Nov 18, 2010 9:49 am

By R. M. Arrieta

San Francisco, with its Victorian buildings and ethnic neighborhoods, each with a personality of its own, has long been a destination spot for tourists.

Every year the city’s Chinatown district, one of the oldest in North America, draws visitors who love the little shops, fresh fish and vegetables and the abundance of restaurants specializing in authentic Chinese food. More than 100 restaurants line the 0.13 square miles that is Chinatown.

Less apparent are the conditions many of the restaurant workers endure. Low to below-minimum wages, unpaid wages, unsafe working conditions and the lack of enough city personnel to enforce violations allow some restaurant owners to run their own personal little fiefdoms—and chronically violate San Francisco’s progressive labor laws. “Check Please!”, a study recently released by the Chinese Progressive Association, makes all this clear.


For more on the National Day of Action Against Wage Theft, read "At Chicago Car Wash, Wage Theft Protest Yields a Check, But No Cash, for One Worker." http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6685/at_chicago_car_wash_wage_theft_protest_yields_a_check_but_no_cash_for_/ (Image courtesy IWJ.org)


Today, members of the San Francisco Progressive Workers Alliance (PWA), labor activists, workers, youth, faith leaders and elected officials across the nation are taking action on this under-reported issue as part of today's National Day of Action Against Wage Theft.

Wage theft includes withheld, delayed or unpaid wages and employers taking a portion of the workers tips. Last week, Working In These Times contributor Art Levine reported about this national effort to bring attention to the issue of wage theft:

The people most likely to be mistreated are immigrants, some of whom are undocumented, or, workers who are poor and don’t want to lose the little work they have, especially in this economy. These circumstances are enough to keep a mistreated worker quiet.


FULL story at link.

[Forkboy]

1. K&R