Portside

Employers will have far less incentive to comply with an anti-wage theft law under a new Department of Labor rule.

The New York State Department of Labor still needs to recover 63% of stolen wages during a five-year period analyzed by ProPublica and Documented. The problem? An understaffed agency with poor tools for recovering wages and enforcing judgments.

Corrupt employers try scams to shortchange, intimidate or retaliate against employees but a restaurant’s attempt to use an alleged priest to get employees to admit workplace “sins” may be among the most shameless.

The labor bill includes a wish list years in the making that will affect virtually every worker in the state and could be the most significant bill in state history.

When kitchen workers at Twin Peaks in TN walked out, protesting a racist manager along with unfair firings and wage theft, they were joined by wait staff who had been abused by the same manager.

Support for Initiative 82 was decisive. Every ward in the city overwhelmingly approved the measure, even wealthy Ward 3, which turned down a previous Initiative.

A system counting tips toward the minimum wage is being fought in many places.

Kim accuses the Chinese-American Planning Council of rampant wage theft—and, in coordination with 1199SEIU, of blocking workers’ access to the courts.