CathNews New Zealand

In a book called “Wage Theft in America,” the author calculates that wage theft costs employees $100bn at a minimum each year and possibly up to $200bn.

The way to steal from those who live in poverty is to do so “in ways that are systematic, impersonal, and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators,” according to Barbara Ehrenreich. “Employers, for example, can simply program their computers to shave a few dollars off each paycheck, or they can require workers to show up 30 minutes or more before the time clock starts ticking,” she writes, and “at the local level … government is increasingly opting to join in the looting.”

• Read Barbara Ehrenreich’s opinion piece
• Image: In These Times

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of several books, including Smile Or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World; Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America; and Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War.

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News category: Analysis and Comment.