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Richard Trumka Calls For The End Of Wage Theft

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, was in Philadelphia to address wage theft, the manipulation by employers to underpay or steal money from their employees.

Trumka, spoke with Dom Giordano on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, and said this all too common practice comes in many forms.

"There are many types of wage theft. You can be violating the minimum wage law. You can be violating the paycheck deductions. You can have tip violations, not paying overtime, shorting of hours, delayed or mispayment of wages. All of those add up to a crime of stealing wages of workers."

He lamented that this crime is rarely dealt with by the legal system.

"You don't have many prosecutors that are very, very interested in prosecuting these things. It's theft and it can even be more than that because, sometimes, cheating workers out of wages is a business model or a business strategy. It my opinion, it raises it up even to a higher level at that point. You have to get prosecutors interested, knowing the issue, understanding it, because it's such an unseen crime."

Trumka also pointed out that undocumented workers are and easy target for wage theft.

"You've got a broken immigration system in this country. Those workers, many or them here, work hard, pay taxes and do everything but they have no rights. Anytime they try to say you underpaid me or you misclassified me, they're either threatened with deportation or they're deported. When they try to point out a health and safety violation, they're either threatened with deportation or they're deported. As a result, they are used right now to drive down the wages of everybody."

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