TIL that in the United States, more money is stolen by employers from employees' wages each year than is stolen in robberies, burglaries, larcenies and auto thefts combined. The most common victims of wage theft are low wage workers.

I worked as a Hotel Valet for about 6 months. I picked up fairly quickly that the upper management was doing some shady stuff when my coworker who had been there for 14years told me casually one night that they hadn't seen a wage increase since he started....14years ago. I went over to the part of the office that has all the union book and all the other stuff that was supposed to be posted around the workplace and started reading. I looked at the wages section and saw that wages we're supposed to increase 1 dollar a year for the past five years. Hmm.

I decided to call the union to get some clarification about what was in the handbook. (This was my first time ever speaking to them) They asked my name and when they went to look me up they couldn't find me anywhere. I had paid them 35 dollars a month off my paycheck in union dues and they didn't even know I existed. Needless to say I was pissed. I started asking more of my coworkers about their wages. Turned out everybody was getting different random amounts of money just taken off for various fees on their paystubs but because they were mostly immigrants not looking to cause trouble and lose their job, they never said anything. Finally, I went back to the guy who had been there for 14 years. He tells me that he has documentation of their wage skimming going back about 12 years when he started noticing it. I told him you have solid evidence of this, you should go talk to a lawyer and get a suit going. After that I didn't see him for a couple weeks. I ended up quitting to go back to school and didn't hear any more about that job until about 6 months later when I get a notice in the mail. This old dude who'd been shafted for a decade and a half decided to have at the valet company and the union. He sued them and the court found in his favor (didn't say how much he got) but it also said that the company owed something in the realm of $8million in backpay to employees over the last several years. Now I didn't get much seeing as I had been there for only 6 months, but I just sat there and my eyes went wide trying to calculate how much money they owed that dude. All I know was he was probably the biggest part of that 8million.

TL:DR Valet Company and Union ripped off employees for upwards of 15 years. Oldest employee gets Justice, sues for $8million in backpay to previous employees.

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