suvivor.

a moment of clarity.

words. 

 "...There are guys over at the building and trades union hall in the San Gabriel Valley who sit all day and wait for their names to be called. I interviewed them when I was campaigning for healthcare reform in 2009. They waited and we drank coffee and ate donuts and they told me about why they chose to sit there for a union job: because they’d done it the other way before. Without a union. They were day laborers who sometimes worked a whole day and sometimes at the end of that day the guy who picked them up would drop them off and refuse to pay. Not just regular work either—hard labor. Sweat. Take all the bricks out the truck. Don’t mess them up. Nothing banged or boomed. And then, after it all, no pay: “Whatcha gonna do? Sue me? Am I gonna have any problems out of you? I can call immigration.” And maybe you’re documented but your brother who’s been working beside you all day isn’t—maybe your brother looks at you like please please please. You went by the rules. The bosses, they broke them.

This is wage theft. There are laws against it, but they aren’t enforced. Eighty-three percent of workers who hold a court-ordered claim to receive their unpaid wages never see a dime. In L.A., low-wage workers lose $26.2 million in wage theft violations every week. I’ve listened to janitors tell stories about not getting paid. I’ve met carwash workers who lived solely on tips—they were not paid wages at all. Carwash workers who were forced to sleep, live, in their cars.

Biblically speaking, there are two rules being broken here. There are sins of commission—when an employer pays a worker less than the minimum wage, or pays for fewer hours than were worked, or pays in cash to dodge payroll taxes (and workers comp and unemployment insurance). And then there are sins of omission—when senior managers, often of very large firms, pressure local store managers, branch managers, contractors or suppliers to keep costs low, without putting in place equally strong measures to prevent wage theft.

...Imagine dreaming of a place your whole life and then discovering it doesn’t exist. She discovered instead that this is a country for other people. A country with so many rules. You become an American when you realize that only with the right amount of money and the right amount of power, you can break these rules, or make them your own."

JEZEBEL: Who Gets to Break the Rules in America?