In what has been described as ''the crime wave no one talks about,'' billions of dollars worth of wages are stolen from millions of workers in the United States every year - a grand theft that exceeds every other larceny category on record annually. Between two and three million workers are paid less than the legal minimum wage. More than three million are misclassified by their employers as independent contractors when they are really employees, allowing employers to shirk their share of payroll taxes and illegally deny workers overtime pay. Even the Economic Policy Foundation, a business-funded think tank, estimated that companies annually steal $19 billion in unpaid overtime. Nationally recognized labor activist Kim Bobo's Wage Theft in America is an incisive handbook for activists, organizers, workers, and concerned citizens on how to prevent the flagrant exploitation of America's working people. Bobo offers a sweeping analysis of the crisis, citing hard-hitting statistics and heartbreaking first-person accounts of exploitation at the hands of employers. She then offers concrete solutions, with special attention to what a new presidential administration can do to address one of the gravest issues facing workers in the twenty-first century.

“This book will give you an entirely new perspective on work in America.” —Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed In what has been described as “the crime wave no one talks about,” billions of dollars’ worth of wages are stolen from millions of workers in the United States every year—a grand theft that exceeds every other larceny category. Even the Economic Policy Foundation, a business-funded think tank, has estimated that companies annually steal an incredible $19 billion in unpaid overtime. The scope of these abuses is staggering, but activists, unions, and policymakers—along with everyday Americans in congregations and towns across the country—have begun to take notice. While the first edition of Wage Theft In America documented the scope of the problem, this new edition adds the latest research on wage theft and tells what community, religious, and labor activists are now doing to address the crisis—from passing state and local wage-theft bills to establishing mayoral task forces and tapping agencies that help low-wage workers in spotting wage theft. Citing hard-hitting statistics and heartbreaking first-person accounts of exploitation at the hands of employers, this updated edition of Wage Theft In America offers concrete solutions and a roadmap for putting an end to this insidious practice.

Across the United States, increasing numbers of employers are breaking, bending, or evading long-established laws and standards designed to protect workers, from the minimum wage to job safety standards to the right to organize. This "gloves-off economy," no longer confined to a marginal set of sweatshops and fly-by-night small businesses, is sending shock waves into every corner of the low-wage labor market. In the process, employers who play by the rules are under growing pressure to follow suit, intensifying the search for low-cost business strategies across a wide range of industries and ratcheting up into ever higher reaches of the labor market. Although other books have touched on pieces of this problem, The Gloves-off Economy is the first to provide a comprehensive, integrated analysis--and quite a disturbing one.This book examines a range of gloves-off practices, the workers who are affected by them, and strategies for enforcing workplace standards. The editors, four respected labor scholars, have brought together economists, sociologists, labor attorneys, union strategists, and other experts to offer varying perspectives on both the problem and the creative solutions currently being explored in a wide range of communities and industries. Annette Bernhardt, Heather Boushey, Laura Dresser, and Chris Tilly and the volume's other authors combine rigorous analysis with a stirring call to renew worker protections in the twenty-first century.

The US Department of Justice is under fire for failing to prosecute banks that caused the 2008 economic meltdown because they are too big to jail. Prosecutors have long neglected to hold corporate executives accountable for chronic mistakes that kill and injure workers and customers. This book, the first of its kind, analyzes five industrial catastrophes that have killed or sickened consumers and workers or caused irrevocable harm to the environment. From the Texas City refinery explosion to the Upper Big Branch mine collapse, the root causes of these preventable disasters include crimes of commission and omission. Although federal prosecutors have made a start on holding low-level managers liable, far more aggressive prosecution is appropriate as a matter of law, policy, and justice. Written in accessible and jargon-free language, this book recommends innovative interpretations of existing laws to elevate the prosecution of white-collar crime at the federal and state levels.

I Am Not a Tractor! celebrates the courage, vision, and creativity of the farmworkers and community leaders who have transformed one of the worst agricultural situations in the United States into one of the best. Susan L. Marquis highlights past abuses workers suffered in Florida’s tomato fields: toxic pesticide exposure, beatings, sexual assault, rampant wage theft, and even, astonishingly, modern-day slavery. Marquis unveils how, even without new legislation, regulation, or government participation, these farmworkers have dramatically improved their work conditions. Marquis credits this success to the immigrants from Mexico, Haiti, and Guatemala who formed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a neuroscience major who takes great pride in the watermelon crew he runs, a leading farmer/grower who was once homeless, and a retired New York State judge who volunteered to stuff envelopes and ended up building a groundbreaking institution. Through the Fair Food Program that they have developed, fought for, and implemented, these people have changed the lives of more than thirty thousand field workers. I Am Not a Tractor! offers a range of solutions to a problem that is rooted in our nation’s slave history and that is worsened by ongoing conflict over immigration.

Why our workplaces are authoritarian private governments—and why we can’t see it One in four American workers says their workplace is a “dictatorship.” Yet that number almost certainly would be higher if we recognized employers for what they are—private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives. Many employers minutely regulate workers’ speech, clothing, and manners on the job, and employers often extend their authority to the off-duty lives of workers, who can be fired for their political speech, recreational activities, diet, and almost anything else employers care to govern. In this compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson examines why, despite all this, we continue to talk as if free markets make workers free, and she proposes a better way to think about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers can enjoy real freedom.