COMP NEWS – A new survey indicates that more than two-fifths of hourly workers in California have reported experiencing serious labor law violations such as wage theft.

41% of hourly workers in California said they experienced at least one serious labor law violation, including wage theft, over the past year, finds a new survey, conducted by researchers at Harvard and UC San Francisco.

 

Why it matters: These violations, like failing to pay overtime, undermine the economic security of low-income workers.

 

The big picture: California has some of the best worker protection laws in the country, going beyond federal requirements — the state requires overtime pay for hourly workers who work longer than eight hours a day.

Researchers surveyed around 1,000 workers, meaning nearly 400 had experienced serious forms of labor law violations.

The researchers surveyed about 1,000 workers at 98 large service industry employers (think fast food, grocery stores and retail).

 

• The serious violations included not getting paid overtime, being made to work off the clock, or getting paid less than the minimum wage — effectively wage theft.
• “These are crimes. People have experienced theft of their time, of their wages,” says Daniel Schneider, the survey’s coauthor and a public policy professor at the Harvard Kennedy School.

To read more about the wage theft epidemic in California, click here.

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