national employment law project
GRITtv: Fighting Wage Theft in New York
The owner of several downtown New York boutiques was arrested recently and faces four years in jail as well as civil lawsuits for up to $1.5 million. His crime? Not paying his employees for overtime, and paying some of them a flat rate of $340 a week for over 60 hours of work.
Carolina Ferreyra was one of those employees, and when she found a flyer for the Retail Action Project, she helped to launch a protest that led to her boss's arrest. She joins us in studio with Phil Andrews of the Retail Action Project and Paul Sonn, legal co-director of the National Employment Law Project, to talk about wage theft, the problems workers face across the country, and what Obama's administration is doing to fight them.
Email this pageGRITtv: Wage Theft in America
Underpaying workers. Denying them overtime. And stealing their wages. It all adds up to a business strategy that makes up what some have called the gloves off economy. According to the authors of a new report, Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers, wage theft and workplace abuses are widespread across key industries in the economy. How does it happen? Annette Bernhardt, co-author of the report, Nancy Cauthen of the Economic Opportunity Project, Patrick Purcell of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, and Gonzalo Mercado of El Centro de Hospitalidad on low wage workers and the American economy.
GRITtv: September 14, 2009
According to a new report, Broken Law, Unprotected Workers, wage theft and workplace abuses are widespread across key industries in the economy. How does it happen? And David Cole, editor of Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable, on the authorization of torture by high level officials in the Bush administration. Will they be prosecuted?
