Fast Food Chains Stealing from Low-Wage Workers

Technically it’s called “wage theft,” and it involves such slick-fingered moves as erasing hours from employee time cards, requiring off-the-clock work, not paying for overtime hours, refusing to reimburse workers for gas they bought while making deliveries, or inventing uniform fees and other deductions that illegally drop pay below the minimum wage. Come on – isn’t it shameful enough that these global behemoths pay rock-bottom wages, without them circling back like low-life pickpockets to steal from their own employees? This is not just corporate thievery, it’s thuggery.

How low can fast-food greed go? So low that the top bosses at headquarters play a sleazy game of Hide & Seek, pretending that they have nothing to do with this rip off. Personnel practices, they airily claim, are left to local franchisees, who are “independent business owners.” Bovine excrement! Corporate central dictates how much mustard each franchise can put on a bun, so to think that it doesn’t monitor every dime in payroll is a ludicrous lie.

In a recent survey of fast-food workers, nine out of ten said they have had wages stolen by their bosses. This thievery has become business as usual, and it’s worse than shameful – it’s slimy. For more information, go to the National Employment Law Project: www.nelp.org.

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This has been reposted from Jim Hightower’s website.