Wage theft facts for kids
Wage theft is when employers illegally hold back money due to their workers (employees). They may withhold wages or deny benefits that are rightfully due to an employee. It is a term used in the in the United States, but the idea applies more widely.
Examples are: failure to pay overtime, paying less than the minimum wage, illegal deductions in pay, working off the clock, or not being paid at all.
Wage theft from low wage immigrant workers is common in the United States. The Economic Policy Institute reported in 2014 that survey evidence suggests wage theft costs US workers billions of dollars a year. The rights violated by wage theft have been guaranteed to workers in the United States in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
In February 2010 Miami-Dade County, Florida became the first jurisdiction in America to ban wage theft. Before that, wage theft was called "the crime wave that almost no one talks about".
See also
In Spanish: Robo de salarios para niños
