#wage theft

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

#talkin #tik tok #disney #wga strike #sag aftra strike #wage theft #writer's strike #actor strike #sag strike #writers strike #actors strike

[iww-gnv]

New York lawmakers proposed three new bills last week that would make it difficult for wage theft violators to conduct business in the state. The legislation would bolster the power of state agencies to crack down on wage theft by stripping violators of their liquor licenses or business licenses, as well as issuing stop-work orders against them. The legislation was prompted by reports of rampant wage theft against New York workers, including two investigations published by Documented and ProPublica. The stories revealed that more than 127,000 New Yorkers have been victims of wage theft during a recent five-year period, but that the New York State Department of Labor was unable to recover $79 million in back wages owed to the workers. The stories were based on an analysis of two databases of wage theft violations obtained from the U.S. and New York Labor departments. The databases provided previously unreported details on how much money had been stolen from workers and also shed light on which businesses had committed wage theft. “We knew from our conversations with labor and from our constituent service caseload that wage theft is a chronic problem,” said Sen. Jessica Ramos, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation. “We did not have the data to understand the scale of the issue in New York state until the ProPublica and Documented series came out last year. Having this reporting as a tool set us up to put this package together and focused our attention on” the capacity of the Department of Labor. The legislation — dubbed the “wage theft deterrence package” by lawmakers — includes three bills, which are co-sponsored in the State Assembly by Assembly members Kenny Burgos, Harvey Epstein and Linda Rosenthal.

#news #us news #uspol #us pol #new york #new york news #wage theft

[dispatchesfromtheclasswar]

#class war #class warfare #classism #wage theft #theft #illegally kept #marriotthotels #marriottbonvoy #jw marriott

[onlytiktoks]

#tiktok #more perfect union #wage theft

[politijohn]

Source

#capitalism #eat the rich #Texas #minimum wage #working class #workers rights #unions #unionize #government #news #current events #wage theft #the left

[odinsblog]

#politics #education #living wages #tuition #minimum wage #inequality #wage theft #social safety net #college should be free

[socialjusticeinamerica]

“The Biden administration is releasing a new labor regulation that would make it harder for employers to skirt minimum wage and overtime obligations by labeling workers as “independent contractors.”

#corporate greed #democrats deliver #Republican greed #organized labor #labor unions #wage theft #Republican union busters

[newsfromstolenland]

working at a grocery store should be enough to radicalize anyone

when I worked at loblaws, which is owned by one of the wealthiest families in canada, we were not permitted to put baby formula on the shelves. it had to go behind the customer service desk, because too many people were stealing it. being that I'm of the opinion that no one should have to pay to eat, I pretended not to know store policy and put it on the shelves anyway. the cheapest of baby formulas cost more than a quarter of what I made in an 8 hour shift. and yes, this is the same grocery chain that pays minimum wage to the majority of their workers, and student wage to workers under 18.

I saw someone banned from the store for attempting to shoplift diapers, another for taking bread. you know the age old "would you steal a loaf of bread to feed your family?"? yeah, a grocery chain owned by a billionaire family will ban you for that. and yes, this is the same grocery chain that admitted to a price fixing scheme based around the cost of bread.

the store manager instructed us to keep an eye out for people who "looked homeless", and to watch them while they were in the store to ensure that they didn't steal anything. and yes, this is the same grocery chain that denied drivers overtime wages unless they worked over 60 hours a week.

and we were unionized! imagine how they would have treated us if we weren't! and yes, this is the same grocery chain that blamed product theft on their workers.

basically, seeing the way that grocery stores underpay workers while boosting their prices and having over the top policies to prevent people from accessing basic human necessities should be enough to make anyone despise capitalism.

#mine #loblaws #grocery stores #human rights #food #wage theft #price fixing #workers rights #capitalism #poverty #income inequality

[smarmy-yet-satisfying]

New goal unlocked: Make billionaires cry

Cyber bully billionaires. If you have the opportunity, bully them to their faces. Make them cry. Make them scared to leave their houses. Terrorize them.

Break out the guillotine if you’re feeling ambitious.

#today is a good day to punch a billionaire in the face #at what point to wh break out the guillotine #capitalism will kill us all #eat the rich #burn the rich #hunt capitalists for sport #capitalism #hunt the rich for sport #tax the billionaires #tax billionaires #late stage capitalism #billionaire #wealth inequality #wage theft #wage gap #wage slavery #wage inequality #capitalist system #stop idolizing celebrities #stop idolizing the rich #celebrity culture

[mostlysignssomeportents]

An excerpt from The Bezzle

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me next in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

Today, I'm bringing you part one of an excerpt from Chapter 14 of The Bezzle, my next novel, which drops on Feb 20. It's an ice-cold revenge technothriller starring Martin Hench, a two-fisted forensic accountant specialized in high-tech fraud:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Hench is the Zelig of high-tech fraud, a character who's spent 40 years in Silicon Valley unwinding every tortured scheme hatched by tech-bros who view the spreadsheet as a teleporter that whisks other peoples' money into their own bank-accounts. This setup is allowing me to write a whole string of these books, each of which unwinds a different scam from tech's past, present and future, starting with last year's Red Team Blues (now in paperback!), a novel that whose high-intensity thriller plotline is also a masterclass in why cryptocurrency is a scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865854/redteamblues

Turning financial scams into entertainment is important work. Finance's most devastating defense is the Shield Of Boringness (h/t Dana Clare) – tactically deployed complexity designed to induce the state that finance bros call "MEGO" ("my eyes glaze over"). By combining jargon and obfuscation, the most monstrous criminals of our age have been able to repeatedly bring our civilization to the brink of collapse (remember 2008?) and then spin their way out of it.

Turning these schemes into entertainment is hard, necessary work, because it incinerates the respectable suit and tie and leaves the naked dishonesty of the finance sector on display for all to see. In The Big Short, they recruited Margot Robbie to explain synthetic CDOs from a bubble-bath. And John Oliver does this every week on Last Week Tonight, coming up with endlessly imaginative stunts and gags to flense the bullshit, laying the scam economy open to the bone.

This was my inspiration for the Hench novels (I've written and sold three of these, of which The Bezzle is number two; I've got at least two more planned). Could I use the same narrative tactics I used to explain mass surveillance, cryptography and infosec in the Little Brother books to turn scams into entertainment, and entertainment into the necessary, informed outrage that might precipitate change?

The main storyline in The Bezzle concerns one of the most gruesome scams in today's America: prison-tech, which sees America's vast army of prisoners being stripped of letters, calls, in-person visits, parcels, libraries and continuing ed in favor of cheap tablets that bilk prisoners and their families of eye-watering sums for every click they make:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

But each Hench novel has a variety of side-quests that work to expose different kinds of financial chicanery. The Bezzle also contains explainers on the workings of MLMs/Ponzis (and how Gerry Ford and Betsy DeVos's father-in-law legalized one of the most destructive forces in America) and the way that oligarchs, foreign and domestic, use Real Estate Investment Trusts to hide their money and destroy our cities.

And there's a subplot about music-royalty theft, a form of pernicious wage theft that is present up and down the music industry supply-chain. This is a subject that came up a lot when Rebecca Giblin and I were researching and writing Chokepoint Capitalism, our 2022 book about creative labor markets:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

Two of the standout cases from that research formed the nucleus of the subplot in The Bezzle, the case of Leonard Cohen's batshit manager who stole millions from him and then went to prison for stalking him, leaving him virtually penniless and forced to keep touring to keep himself fed:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/apr/19/leonard-cohen-former-manager-jailed

The other was George Clinton, whose manager forged his signature on a royalty assignment, then used the stolen money to defend himself against Clinton's attempts to wrestle his rights back and even to sue Clinton for defamation for writing about the caper in his memoir:

https://www.musicconnection.com/the-legal-beat-george-clinton-wins-defamation-case/

That's the tale that this excerpt – which I'll be serializing in six parts over the coming week – tells, in fictionalized form. It's not Margot Robbie in a bubble-bath, it's not a John Oliver monologue, but I think it's pretty goddamned good.

I'm leaving for a long, multi-city, multi-country, multi-continent tour with The Bezzle next Wednesday, starting with an event at Weller Bookworks in Salt Lake City on the 21st:

https://www.wellerbookworks.com/event/store-cory-doctorow-feb-21-630-pm

I'll in be in San Diego on the 22nd at Mysterious Galaxy:

https://www.mystgalaxy.com/22224Doctorow

And then it's on to LA (with Adam Conover), Seattle (with Neal Stephenson), Portland, Phoenix and beyond:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#bezzle-tour

I hope you'll come out for the tour (and bring your friends)!

Between 1972 and 1978, Steve Soul (a.k.a. Stefon Magner) had a string of sixteen Billboard Hot 100 singles, one of which cracked the Top 10 and won him an appearance on Soul Train. He is largely forgotten today, except by hip-­hop producers who prize his tracks as a source of deep, funky grooves. They sampled the hell out of him, not least because his rights were controlled by Inglewood Jams, a clearinghouse for obscure funk tracks that charged less than half of what the Big Three labels extracted for each sample license.

Even at that lower rate, those license payments would have set Stefon up for a comfortable retirement, especially when added to his Social Security and the disability check from Dodgers Stadium, where he cleaned floors for more than a decade before he fell down a beer-­slicked bleacher and cracked two of his lumbar discs. But Stefon didn’t get a dime. His former manager, Chuy Flores, forged his signature on a copyright assignment in 1976. Stefon didn’t discover this fact until 1979, because Chuy kept cutting him royalty checks, even as Stefon’s band broke up and those royalties trickled off. In Stefon’s telling, the band broke up because the rest of the act—­especially the three-­piece rhythm section of two percussionists and a beautiful bass player with a natural afro and a wild, infectious hip-­wiggle while she played—­were too coked up to make it to rehearsal, making their performances into shambling wreckages and their studio sessions into vicious bickerfests. To hear the band tell of it, Stefon had bad LSD (“Lead Singer Disease”) and decided he didn’t need the rest of them. One thing they all agreed on: there was no way Stefon would have signed over the band’s earnings to Chuy, who was little more than a glorified bookkeeper, with Stefon hustling all their bookings and even ordering taxis to his bandmates’ houses to make sure they showed up at the studio or the club on time. Stefon remembered October of ’79 well. He’d been waiting with dread for the envelope from Chuy. The previous royalty check, in July, had been under $250. The previous quarter’s had been over $1,000. This quarter’s might have zero. Stefon needed the money. His 1972 Ford Galaxie needed a new transmission. He couldn’t keep driving it in first.

The envelope arrived late, the day before Halloween, and for a brief moment, Stefon was overcome by an incredible, unbelieving elation: Chuy’s laboriously typewritten royalty statement ended with the miraculous figure of $7,421.16. Seven thousand dollars! It was more than two years’ royalties, all in one go! He could fix the Galaxie’s transmission and get the ragtop patched, and still have money left over for his back rent, his bar tab, his child support, and a fine steak dinner, and even then, he’d end the month with money in his savings account.

But there was no check in the envelope. Stefon shook the envelope, carefully unfolded the royalty statement to ensure that there was no check stapled to its back, went downstairs to the apartment building lobby and rechecked his mailbox.

Finally, he called Chuy.

“Chuy, man, you forgot to put a check in the envelope.”

“I didn’t forget, Steve. Read the paperwork again. You gotta send me a check.”

“What the fuck? That’s not funny, Chuy.”

“I ain’t joking, Steve. I been advancing you royalties for more than three years, but you haven’t earned nothing new since then—­no new recordings. I can’t afford to carry you no more.”

“Say what?”

Chuy explained it to him like he was a toddler. “Remember when you signed over your royalties to me in ’76? Every dime I’ve sent you since then was an advance on your future recordings, only you haven’t had none of those, so I’m cutting you off and calling in your note. I’m sorry, Steve, but I ain’t a charity. You don’t work, you don’t earn. This is America, brother. No free lunches.”

“After I did what in ’76?”

“Steve, in 1976 you signed over all your royalties to me. We agreed, man! I can’t believe you don’t remember this! You came over to my spot and I told you how it was and you said you needed money to cover the extra horns for the studio session on Fight Fire with Water. I told you I’d cover them and you’d sign over all your royalties to me.”

Stefon was briefly speechless. Chuy had paid the sidemen on that session, but that was because Chuy owed him a thousand bucks for a string of private parties they’d played for some of Chuy’s cronies. Chuy had been stiffing him for months and Stefon had agreed to swap the session fees for the horn players in exchange for wiping out the debt, which had been getting in the way of their professional relationship.

“Chuy, you know it didn’t happen that way. What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about when you signed over all your royalties to me. And you know what? I don’t like your tone. I’ve carried your ass for years now, sent you all that money out of my own pocket, and now you gotta pay up. My generosity’s run out. When you gonna send me a check?”

Of course, it was a gambit. It put Stefon on tilt, got him to say a lot of ill-­advised things over the phone, which Chuy secretly recorded. It also prompted Stefon to take a swing at Chuy, which Chuy dived on, shamming that he’d had a soft-­tissue injury in his neck, bringing suit for damages and pressing an aggravated-­assault charge.

He dropped all that once Stefon agreed not to keep on with any claims about the forged signature; Stefon went on to become a good husband, a good father, and a hard worker. And if cleaning floors at Dodgers Stadium wasn’t what he’d dreamed of when he was headlining on Soul Train, at least he never missed a game, and his boy came most weekends and watched with him. Stefon’s supervisor didn’t care.

But the stolen royalties ate at him, especially when he started hearing his licks every time he turned on the radio. His voice, even. Chuy Flores had a fully paid-­off three-­bedroom in Eagle Rock and two cars and two ex-­wives and three kids he was paying child support on, and Stefon sometimes drove past Chuy Flores’s house to look at his fancy palm trees all wrapped up in strings of Christmas lights and think about who paid for them.

ETA: Here's part two!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/17/the-steve-soul-caper/#lead-singer-disease

#pluralistic #the bezzle #martin hench #marty hench #red team blues #fiction #crime fiction #crime thrillers #thrillers #technothrillers #novels #books #royalties #wage theft #creative labor

[thefugitivesaint]

While the media has been happy to parade around the notion that there's an "epidemic of shoplifting" plaguing retail stores, a premise that has been demonstrated to be factually incorrect and exaggerated, they have basically ignored widespread wage theft by those very same retail companies (take, for instance, Bob Nardelli, the former chief executive for Home Depot, screaming about "organized gangs" of shoplifters while on tv while Home Depot settles a class action lawsuit over wage theft to the tune of 72.5 million dollars and McDonalds pays out 26 million dollars for the same. These are just two notable examples, the latter from 2019.) How "crime" is framed and discussed matters for a host of reasons I'm not in the mood to expand on here at the moment but I will say that corporate theft is a topic that I rarely hear addressed in any detailed and sustained form by most media outlets. A quick addendum: back in 2018, a ruling from the Supreme Court in 'Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis', made class action lawsuits against employers harder by weakening workplace protections for employees. I'm being lazy here in my presentation so I suggest you do a more rigorous accounting of this subject on your own.

#wage theft #corporate crime #here's your brief moment of politics #the new republic

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

#talkin #tik tok #sonic #knuckles #sonic & knuckles #sonic and knuckles #wage theft #capitalism

[reasonsforhope]

"California will begin paying for free legal help with immigration for undocumented farmworkers who are involved in state investigations of wage theft or other labor violations, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced this week.

The $4.5 million pilot program will provide qualifying farmworkers with referrals for legal help with their immigration status. 

Roughly half of California’s farmworker population is believed to be undocumented. Fear of deportation and difficulties finding jobs can discourage workers from filing labor complaints or serving as witnesses in cases alleging unsafe work temperatures, wage theft, or employer retaliation for unionizing, officials said...

Respecting immigrant rights

Farmworkers in labor investigations who qualify for the new state program will receive a direct referral to legal services organizations that already offer immigration services, such as the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County or the United Farm Workers Foundation, which spoke in support of the program. 

The free legal services workers could receive include case review, legal advice and representation by an attorney, according to Newsom’s office...

Deferred deportation

State officials said the pilot program aligns with a new Biden administration policy that makes it easier for undocumented workers who are victims of labor rights violations to request deferred action from deportation. Because the federal Department of Homeland Security can’t respond to all immigration violations, it exercises “prosecutorial discretion” to decide who to try to deport.

State officials said they won’t ask for workers’ immigration status, but noncitizens granted this deferred action may be eligible for work authorization.

This year, California labor department officials began supporting undocumented workers’ requests for prosecutorial discretion or deferred action from federal immigration officials, including when employers threaten workers with immigration enforcement to prevent workers from cooperating with state investigators. 

“The Department of Industrial Relations’ Labor Commissioner’s Office … was the first state agency to request deferred action from DHS for employees in an active investigation, and that request was successful,” Hickey said. “This is an important process for undocumented workers to be aware of.”"

-via CalMatters, July 21, 2023

#labor #immigrant rights #immigration #migrant workers #farm workers #wage theft #exploitation #labor rights #workers rights #deferred action #legal system #legal aid #california #united states #us politics #undocumented #undocumented workers #labor trafficking #work permit #good news #hope

[iww-gnv]

A Naples restaurant that charges $129 for a three-course prix fixe menu — $149 if you order the tenderloin — lied about jobs, stole tips, improperly paid and otherwise abused workers from the U.S. and imported via H-2B visa program, U.S. Department of Labor said. Labor announced that Sails Restaurant paid $184,139 in back wages to 56 workers, $3,288.19 per employee, and a $53,536 civil money penalty for H-2B program violations.

#news #labor news #florida #florida news #wage theft #us dept of labor #us department of labor #us news

[bfpnola]

—

🚨 want more materials like these? this resource was shared through BFP’s discord server! everyday, dozens of links and files are requested and offered by youth around the world! and every sunday, these youth get together for virtual teach-ins. if you’re interested in learning more, join us! link in our bio! 🚨

#unions #labor #how to #anti capitalism #wage theft #democracy #resources #youtube #reaux speaks #community

[nando161mando]

Anyone who isn't happy for the UPS workers for this win needs to reevaluate their priorities.

#ups teamsters #ups #teamsters #workers #slavery #slavetothewage #workers rights #sex worker #construction worker #worker solidarity #blue collar worker #class war #classwar #wages #minimum wage #wage slavery #living wage #wage theft #ausgov #politas #auspol #tasgov #taspol #australia #neoliberal capitalism #fuck neoliberals #anthony albanese #albanese government #capitalism #anti capitalist