Wage Theft is a major problem in the United States. The Economic Policy Institute recently reported that wage theft costs U.S. workers billions of dollars a year.  Wage theft comes in many different forms and includes, but is not limited to, failure to pay overtime wages, minimum wage violations, misclassifying employees as salary exempt, misclassifying workers as independent contractors, making illegal deductions from employee’s pay, tipped job violations, miscalculating regular or overtime rate, and working off the clock.  Moreover, it is illegal for an employer to retaliate against an employee for complaining about wage violations or for bringing a lawsuit or other action against an employer.

Wage theft and wage violations occur across all industries and jobs.  Here are some of the industries where wage theft and violations are the most common:

1. Restaurants and Hotels
2. Home Health Care
3. Construction
4. Nurses (RNs, LPNs, STNA, etc.)
5. Factory and Packaging Workers
6. Retail and Drug Stores
7. Casino Workers
8. Security Guards
9. Waiters/Waitresses, Servers, Bartenders
10. Maintenance, Repair, and Technicians
11. Manufacturing

There are many ways an employer can violate the wage and overtime laws. Here is a list of some of the most commons ways, although there are certainly other violations:

1. Automatically deducting meal breaks and other breaks from pay.
2. Misclassifying an employee as salary exempt
3. Misclassifying an employee as an independent contractor
4. Not paying overtime because an employee is “salary”
5. Altering time records
6. Requiring Employees to work or travel off the clock
7. For more, see the Overtime Laws page (Link to Overtime Laws page)