Three ways your bosses are stealing your pay

[ErikJ]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/three-ways-your-bosses-are-stealing-your-pay-2015-04-03?link=MW_popular

Opinion: Three ways your bosses are stealing your pay

Apr 3, 2015
WASHINGTON — The rich are getting richer, and everyone else is lucky just to keep running in the same spot.
One reason for the widening gap between the few at the top and everyone else is simply power: Bosses have it and workers don’t. Over the past few decades, workers’ rights have deteriorated, as companies figured out more ways to squeeze their workers.

Here are three ways companies cheat their workers.

Wage theft

One of the easiest ways to cheat workers is to simply not pay them what they’ve earned. No one knows exactly how widespread this practice is, but about $1 billion in stolen wages is recovered every year, and that’s surely the tip of the iceberg. Tens of millions of workers have all or part of their wages stolen, with an annual cost to workers of about $50 billion, according to one estimate from the Economic Policy Institute, one of the few think tanks in Washington that thinks about working people. .....................

Misclassified ‘independent’ contractors
One form of wage theft deserves its own entry: the misclassification of employees as independent contractors. Millions of workers are affected, especially in industries such as construction, truck driving, real estate, home care, janitorial and high-tech jobs.
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Pension theft
Some big companies have become adept at stealing their workers’ pension and retiree health-care insurance. As detailed by Wall Street Journal reporter Ellen Schultz, even profitable companies have employed accounting gimmicks to strip pension funds to bulk up profits and bonuses. ..................

[msongs]

1. add taxes to the list - politicians are indeed our bosses and not the other way around

the poor and middle class get creamed while our elected congress and president scam on behalf of their one percent best friends

[ErikJ]

2. Especially at the local/state level

The bottom 20% pay 3 to 7 times the tax rate the rich do in our states. Especially the states with no income tax. And 1000's of the 1% like Romney pay a lower federal rate than working Americans.

[Sherman A1]

3. Under the heading of wage theft

I would include the use of advance technology (cell phones) that never allows one to be off. It's just an email or a text message or a phone call with a question, some memo or alike well after regular work hours, days off or vacation all of which goes unpaid, because hey, it's just a few minutes... Right? And it is viewed as acceptable practices, because hey, it's just a couple of minutes......

Makes me

[angrychair]

5. ^^^^this^^^^ (nt)

[blackspade]

4. Despicable

[Quantess]

6. K & R

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

7. K & R