UCLA: Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers

At the start of the 21st century, America's workplace laws are failing to protect our country's workers. In industries ranging from construction and food manufacturing to restaurants, janitorial services and home health care, workers are enduring minimum wage and overtime violations, hazardous working conditions, discrimination, and retaliation for speaking up or trying to organize. They have little recourse because of their need for work, especially during the recession. Until now, however, advocates and policy makers lacked representative and reliable data on the magnitude of the problem, the workers who are most affected, and the industries that are the biggest culprits.

Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers is the first study of its kind, exposing systematic and routine violations of employment and labor laws in core sectors of the economy. In 2008, we conducted a landmark survey of 4,387 workers in low-wage industries in the three largest U.S. cities-Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City. We used an innovative, rigorous methodology that allowed us to reach vulnerable workers who are often missed in standard surveys, such as unauthorized immigrants and those paid in cash. Our goal was to obtain accurate and statistically representative estimates of the prevalence of workplace violations.

The study found that:

* Workplace violations are severe and widespread in the low-wage labor market. In our sample, 26% of low-wage workers were paid less than the minimum wage in the week prior to the survey, and 76% of those who worked more than 40 hours were not paid the legally required overtime rate.
* Job and employer characteristics are key to understanding workplace violations. For example, the industry and occupation of a worker's job was one of the strongest predictors of violations.
* All workers - regardless of legal status, race, gender and nativity - are at risk of workplace violations, though some groups are more vulnerable than others.
* More than two-thirds of our sample experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous work week. Assuming a full-time, full-year work schedule, we estimate that workers lose an average of $2,634 annually due to workplace violations, out of total earnings of $17,616.

Minimum wage violations:

Fully 26 percent of workers in our sample were paid less than the legally required minimum wage in the previous work week.* These minimum wage violations were not trivial in magnitude: 60 percent of workers were underpaid by more than $1 per hour.

Overtime violations:

Over a quarter of our respondents worked more than 40 hours during the previous week. Of those, 76 percent were not paid the legally required overtime rate by their employers.

Like minimum wage violations, overtime violations were of substantial magnitude. The average worker with a violation had put in 11 hours of overtime—hours that were either underpaid or not paid at all.

“Off-the-clock” violations:

Nearly a quarter of the workers in our sample came in early and/or stayed late after their shift during the previous work week. Of these workers, 70 percent did not receive any pay at all for the work they performed outside of their regular shift.

Meal break violations:

The large majority of our respondents (86 percent) worked enough consecutive hours to be legally entitled to at least one meal break during the previous week. Of these workers, more than two-thirds (69 percent) received no break at all, had their break shortened, were interrupted by their employer, or worked during the break—all of which constitute a violation of meal break law.


Pay stub violations and illegal deductions:

In California, Illinois and New York, workers are required to receive documentation of their earnings and deductions, regardless of whether they are paid in cash or by check. However, 57 percent of workers in our sample did not receive this mandatory documentation in the previous work week.

Employers are generally not permitted to take deductions from a worker’s pay for damage or loss, work-related tools or materials or transportation. But 41 percent of respondents who reported deductions from their pay in the previous work week were subjected to these types of illegal deductions.

Tipped job violations:

Of the tipped workers in our sample, 30 percent were not paid the tipped worker minimum wage (which in Illinois and New York is lower than the regular state minimum wage). In addition, 12 percent of tipped workers experienced tip stealing by their employer or supervisor, which is illegal.

Illegal employer retaliation:

We found that when workers complained about their working conditions or tried to organize a union, employers often responded by retaliating against them. Just as important, many workers never made complaints in the first place, often because they feared retaliation by their employer. One in five workers in our sample reported that they had made a complaint to their employer....