Wage Theft and Work Safety: Immigrant Day Labor Jobs and the Potential for Worker Rights Training at Worker Centers

Immigrant day laborers routinely experience exploitative behaviors as part of their employment. These experiences are understood in the context of their immigration histories and in the context of their long-term goals for less precarious labor and living situations. Using mixed methods, over three data collection periods in 2016, 2019, and 2020, we analyze the work experiences of immigrant day labors in Houston and Austin, Texas. We report how workers judge precarious jobs and respond to labor exploitation in an informal labor market. We also discuss data pertaining to a worker rights training intervention conducted through a city-sponsored worker center. We discuss the potential for worker centers to be a convening and remediation space for workers and employers. Worker centers where immigrant day labors meet employers offer the potential for informal intervention into wage theft and work safety violations, by formalizing the context where laborers are hired.

Rights without remedy: the disconnection of labour across multiple scales and domains

This article examines the disconnection between promises of labour rights made at the international level and their inaccessibility to workers at the local level. Going beyond the concept of a global ‘governance gap’, it draws on a political economy perspective and focuses on the intersecting and competing roles of different forms of capital and the state, in curtailing workers’ paths to remedy in the global apparel (garment) value chain. A longitudinal case study of a campaign by Turkish garment workers, seeking remedy for lost earnings and severance payments due factory closure and wage theft, is the focus for analysis. The workplace is conceptualised as a key ‘arena of disarticulation’ in the apparel value chain, central in simultaneously embedding and dis-embedding commitments by brands, the state and employers, such that even wages for work done may be denied to workers with relative impunity. The article considers to what extent promises made in abstraction at the international level can hope to guarantee conditions at workplace level.

Financial misconduct and employee mistreatment: Evidence from wage theft

I examine the relation between firms’ financial conduct and wage theft. Wage theft represents the single largest form of theft committed in the United States and primarily affects firms’ most vulnerable employees. I show that wage theft is more prevalent (i) when firms just meet or beat earnings targets and (ii) when executives’ personal liability for wage theft decreases. Wage theft precedes financial misconduct while the theft is undetected, but once firms are caught engaging in wage theft they are more likely to shift to engaging in financial misconduct. My findings highlight an economically meaningful yet previously undocumented way in which firms’ financial incentives relate to employee treatment.

Is industrial relations reform the road to recovery in monopsonistic labour markets?

This article considers the national industrial relations policy aspects of the economic recovery agenda in Australia, in the context of the theory of monopsonistic competition, employment and productivity. This framework acknowledges the employer ability to exercise discretion in the setting of wages. The proposed reforms were unlikely to lead to any increase in economic growth through higher labour productivity or employment. Proposed agendas in enterprise bargaining, greenfields agreements and award simplification (as well as union regulation), would principally have reduced labour costs and incomes. In many circumstances, allowing employers to offer lower wages may lead to fewer filled jobs, higher labour turnover and absenteeism and lower employment. The incentive on employers to improve labour productivity may fall. Proposals to more energetically punish wage theft may have had the opposite effects, but these were abandoned by the government despite support from the other parties. In the end, the only part of the reform agenda to pass Parliament concerned changes to the definition and treatment of casual employees, but casual employment grew strongly before the Bill took effect, the crisis the Bill was meant to solve eased before the Bill was passed, and even if successful the changes would have done little to boost labour productivity. JEL Codes: D43, J31, J38

Multi-Stakeholder Frameworks for Rectification of Non-Compliance in Cleaning Supply Chains: The Case of the Cleaning Accountability Framework

There is now an expanding body of literature on the significant problem of business non-compliance with minimum labour standards including ‘wage theft’. Extended liability regulation beyond the direct employer is seen as one solution to this non-compliance in fragmented but hierarchically organised industries—such as the cleaning industry. This article uses empirical evidence to assess the effectiveness of one such regulatory scheme, the Cleaning Accountability Framework (CAF), in addressing non-compliance with minimum labour standards (including provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and the Cleaning Services Award 2020). We find that CAF has been successful in identifying and rectifying certain non-compliance, improving working conditions for some cleaners involved in the scheme. We synthesise the key success factors of CAF in view of envisioning the adoption of such co-regulation frameworks in other industries. We also propose legal reforms that will support change across the cleaning industry.

Returning home empty handed: Examining how COVID-19 exacerbates the non-payment of temporary migrant workers’ wages

The crisis unleashed by COVID-19 has profoundly impacted the world of work, with many workers losing their jobs or with insufficient safety measures in place for those still in work. Migrant workers are among the precarious workforce that is employed in particularly affected sectors where they have been subjected to labour rights’ violations for a long time. The pandemic has further exposed and exacerbated the exploitation of migrant workers in particular, as evident from the widespread occurrence of the non- or underpayment of wages for work that has been carried out. Despite the efforts made in recent years at the global level to arrive at a common framework to regulate international labour migration in accordance with international human and labour rights’ standards, little progress has been achieved on the issue of wage theft. This article analyses the reasons why the institutional architecture in place is ineffective to tackle the settlement of outstanding wage claims. We use the concept of access to justice as a starting point and steer our examination towards global advocacy as epitomised by a concerted campaign by an alliance between civil society organisations (CSOs) and global union confederations, which calls for the implementation of a justice mechanism for repatriated migrant workers. Our analysis is specifically centred on low-wage migrants on temporary, employer-tied contracts as illustrated by the South Asia–Middle East/Gulf migration corridor.

Work

Work gives people dignity, income, and political voice but it also puts people at risk of premature death, jeopardizes self-sufficiency, and dominates workers’ lives. How a person experiences work profoundly influences well-being and lifetime success. How a society organizes work opportunities shapes public health, fairness, and democracy. This chapter describes how changes in modern capitalism have expanded a workforce that is low paid with few benefits, inadequately protected against workplace hazards, and lacking in economic security. It explains how deregulation, low wages, weakened labor laws, and the rise of the gig economy have worsened the life circumstances of millions of U.S. workers, threatening their physical and mental health. The chapter also describes how new forms of labor organizing and new coalitions have promoted pro-worker policies such as living wages, sick and parental leave, laws against wage theft, and universal health care and childcare.

Industrial legislation in Australia, 2020

In 2020, the Federal Morrison Liberal Government scrambled to respond to the effects of the international coronavirus pandemic on the Australian labour market in two key ways. First, through largescale social welfare and economic stimulus (the ‘JobKeeper’ scheme) and second, through significant proposed reform to employment laws as part of a pandemic recovery package (the ‘Omnibus Bill’). Where the first measure was administered by employers, the second was largely designed to suspend and/or redefine labour protections in the interests of employers. In this respect, the message from the Federal Government was clear: that the costs of pandemic recovery should be borne by workers at the discretion of employers. State Labor Governments, by contrast, enacted a range of industrial protections. These included the first Australia ‘wage theft’ or underpayment frameworks on behalf of both employees and contractors in the construction industry. On-trend with state industrial legislation over the past 4 years, these state governments continued to introduce industrial manslaughter offences, increased access to workers’ compensation, labour hire licensing schemes and portable long service leave.

“No Place for Old Men”: Immigrant Duration, Wage Theft, and Economic Mobility among Day Laborers in Denver, Colorado

Day laborers are a highly vulnerable population, due to their contingent work arrangements, low socioeconomic position, and precarious immigration status. Earlier studies posited day labor as a temporary bridge for recent immigrants to achieve more stable employment, but recent studies have observed increasing duration of residence in the United States among foreign-born day laborers. This article draws on 170 qualitative interviews and a multi-venue, year-long street corner survey of 411 day laborers in the Denver metropolitan area to analyze how duration in the United States affects day laborers’ wages, work, and wage theft experiences. Compared to recent immigrants, foreign-born day laborers with longer duration in the United States, we found, worked fewer hours and had lower total earnings but also had higher hourly wages and lower exposure to wage theft. We draw on qualitative interviews to address whether this pattern represented weathering, negative selection, or greater discernment. Rather than upward or downward mobility, long duration immigrant day labors had more jagged incorporations experiences. Interviews suggest that day laborers draw on experience to mitigate the risk of wage theft but that the value of experience is undercut by the fierce competition of daily recruitment, ultimately highlighting the compounding vulnerabilities facing longer duration and older immigrant day laborers. The article highlights duration as an understudied precarity factor which can adversely impact the economic assimilation of long duration immigrants who persist in contingent markets like day labor.