That’s literally not the definition.
https://wagetheftisacrime.com/
Don’t dilute the definition of the crime with nonsense.
Boss asks everyone to come in unpaid for a mandatory meeting? That’s wage theft.
They lock you in the store when you’re off the clock to “clean up the store”? That’s wage theft.
Stolen tips, no overtime pay for overtime work, altering timecard punches? All wage theft.
Making too much profit and not passing it to employees may be highly unethical, but it’s not legally wage theft.
Making too much profit and not passing it to employees may be highly unethical, but it’s not legally wage theft.
That’s capitalism.
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That’s not capitalism.
That’s not not capitalism.
It’s not a basis of capitalism by definition, but it sure seems inevitable with the equally-inevitable greedy mindset that seems to go along with it. How’s that?
it is the definition of capitalism, as defined by Marx, who coined it.
Marx criticized capitalism, but the capitalist theory is generally attributed to Adam Smith from his works about 45 years prior to Marx’s birth.
try reading source material.
it is.
I’m not religious but… preach.
I’m a hard-core athiest, too, bro. People can preach things other than religion. This person is simply preaching truth.
Thank you. I came to say something similar. Wage theft is already a big legal problem that doesn’t get enough attention or action to fix it. Don’t intentionally mix it with a separate ethical issue making the legal issue even less likely to be addressed. They are similar, even related, issues. But they are not the same, nor will they be addressed the same. Don’t conflate them.
Thank you for this. I used to hear the term “wage theft” and associate it with underpaying workers relative to the value they produce, until I learned that wage theft refers to underpaying workers relative to what they’re contractually entitled to.
Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that it’s a problem to pay workers far less than the value they give, but “you’re not paying me what I’m worth” is not as egregious a problem as “you’re not paying me what you agreed to pay me.”
In most cases, underpayment can’t be fixed by an individual for themselves without a wide scale strike (which many workers aren’t in a good position to risk,) but wage theft is currently illegal and can be addressed by filing a complaint. So it’s better to keep it clear what wage theft is so that the average worker doesn’t dismiss it as some communist idea, at least until wage theft is no longer the greatest form of theft in the US.
And “lemon” has a very specific definition when applied to used cars so that dealerships can sell junkers with engines that blow up after 6 months and get away with it. Doesn’t make it right, and doesn’t make the car any less of a lemon.
I agree that it is wrong. However, in your example you were sold a bad car either way. Wage theft is stealing/keeping wages you are legally owed, while not sharing the profits, while again still wrong, nothing was stolen from you. You just weren’t given more.
“you weren’t given more” is too weak. What happens is you are not given a fair share of the value of your work
Correct, but, a contract was made. You agreed to work a certain amount of time doing a certain job for a certain pay. Upon completion of that work you’re paid what was agreed to in the contract.
I don’t like it either but there’s a reason it’s not illegal. Immoral, maybe, but not illegal.
You and your employer agreed on what that value of your work is prior to you completing it. So long as they do their part, it’s not wage theft any more than making a low-ball offer on something you see on Craigslist is theft of product. In either case, one party is free to refuse. Both can renegotiate from there, or either one can walk away from it all.
Well “fair” is subjective, I was just objectively describing what is happening.
it is stealing, even if it is in accordance with a contract. those contracts are signed between unequal parties, effectively under duress
I’ve never signed an employment contract under duress. But this is exactly why I suggest to people to always be searching for another job, which means the next contract you sign absolutely does not need to be made under duress. Every job ive left I’ve had something lined up.
But that being said, even if what you say is true, that doesn’t mean any arbitrary thing you think should have been included actually should have been included. So trying to paint increased profits for the owner as theft because still doesn’t hold water. Sure you should have gotten more, but was that it? Probably not because plenty of people take these jobs not under duress with no profit sharing.
you’ve never been faced with homelessness or hunger or lack of medical care if you didn’t take a job?
You claimed they were signed under duress, I pointed out that I know this isn’t always the case. But I even addressed your point assuming your claim was true.
It doesn’t sound to me that you are approaching this in good faith.
your accusation of bad faith is, itself, bad faith
Lemon actually has a set legal definition as well. A car isn’t a lemon because you don’t like it, or even if it breaks down immediately after you buy it.
It even varies BY STATE.
https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/vehicle-lemon-laws-by-state/
So here:
“To qualify for protection, the defect must be reported to the manufacturer and given a reasonable number of attempts to perform the repair. If the vehicle is out of service for 30 calendar days or more, you may pursue a replacement or refund.”
But across the river:
“If your car experiences a serious defect or a problem that makes it unreliable or unsafe within 2 years or 24,000 miles of delivery, you may send a written request asking for a replacement vehicle.”
Matilda’s Dad has entered the chat.
Yep. Big bird’s description is the increase of exploitation on the workers. Wage theft is denying wages you are due. Very similar in how they effect you and how they feel, definitionally different.
And legally different. As long as the employer is paying a legal wage and abiding by all the overtime, meal, and tip laws, it’s not illegal to pay someone less than they’re worth.
I remember my first encounter with wage theft. Fortunately, I was drilled with the whole DONT WORK FOR FREE philosophy.
Boss asked me to go grab some things from the supermarket before my shift. I said am I on the clock? He said, “It’s on the way. What’s the problem?”
I pretended like I forgot and played stupid. And he sent me back out AFTER I clocked in.
I’d have been like “What’s my budget?” and filled out an expense report and billed for my time. LOL.
Youre so right, exploration through waged labour isn’t even illegal!
youre like that douche who scolded me for telling someone retail workers minimum wages are .30c higher than they actually are. Oh youre technically right, thank god we’re building a bridge and that .30c really makes a difference.
Its not a technicality though, it’s a completely different thing.
I think it’s worth keeping ‘wage theft’ to that particular definition, to help with tackling what is a big problem and legally recognised (as illegal). And, as someone else said, so workers don’t dismiss it as a far-off ideal and miss the chance to fight for their illegally-stolen wages.
Wage theft in the sense of theft of fair share of generated value/profit, needs a new name.
How about profit theft? Value theft?
After all, calling it wages already accepts the idea of owners and employees.
It’s not diluting the definition, it’s expanding the definition.
“Legally” just means words written on paper, words that can be changed with legislation.
Don’t get this twisted, the law isn’t some unchanging monolith just because modern governance has been at a standstill when it comes to legislation. There’s “legal” ways to expand the definition until what Big Bird is saying is the legal definition.
I would argue expanding the definition is important, because people need to see spending millions on stock buybacks while cutting wages and cutting jobs to all help boost the stock as the theft of value that it is.
Further, language evolves and if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people who refuse to accept that the definition of words can grow and change. So spare me the pearl clutching over the “proper, legal definition.” This is solarpunk memes, not boringdystopia memes.
Things have meaning. In the process of expanding the meaning, the meaning is made less pointed. If it has less of a point, it becomes broad (or diluted). So to make the original point, one must find new words, since the original definition has been so watered down and broadened.
Go tell that to the likes of Baudrillard and Derrida.
Referencing people whose communication styles are notoriously difficult to understand for average people is not great support for your point.
Once we can assume the “common person” is well versed in post structuralism, we can have that chat. Until then, I’m good with a pragmatic approach to linguistics.
The actual currently defined wage theft is already illegal. The law simply needs to be properly enforced.
While I agree with the substance of this post, that underpaying labor to funnel wealth to owners is wrong, that is currently not illegal. (Pro tip: it’s capitalism.)
Each of these two problems requires a vastly different solution. Conflating the two only makes it more difficult to solve either.
The definition of words can change, but you’ve made me notice: there’s something more insidious and dishonest potentially going on here.
“Name is definition” is not just making a linguistic association, which, as you say, can change across time and community.
It’s also saying, “when you heard name before, what the speaker meant was definition.” Which, in this case, can be a lie. That’s abuse of teaching authority.
Now that’s not the whole of it, and you have a point. Just you made me notice this aspect now.
Chiming in with those who want to keep the specific meaning of wage theft, to better address that already-egregious problem, how about a new name for this.
Value theft. Or, Profit theft.
That’s not wage theft, that’s capitalism.
Edit: Now that I’m on break I can give an example that I experienced. My boss was trimming hours off of my checks at my first job. Like I’d work 40, he’d pay me for 35. I’d constantly have to get on his as to get a check for those hours. Eventually the place got shut down for other reasons.
Profit isn’t illegal, so it’s not technically theft in any legal sense. But if a single individual (the owner) takes the fruit of an organizations labor and doesn’t distribute the entirety of that fruit to the workers (including themselves) and continual operation of the business, they are essentially stealing what is due to the business and workers. If the owner skimming off the top weren’t there, the workers would distribute the fruits equally, and ensure some is set aside for business costs.
Capitalism breeds wage theft
But isn’t in itself wage theft, which this post is saying it is and by equivicating the 2 you dilute the definition of wage theft.
That is not what wage theft is. Wage theft is when you don’t get paid what you’re legally supposed to receive. Examples would be clocking you out before done working so you get less hours, not tracking overtime properly, etc.
…and the great thing is by classifying your employees as EXEMPT, you can get away with it, too!..
Love the message. But I can only think of the unspeakable horrors big bird is about to commit on those children
I don’t love the message, because that’s not what wage theft is. Wage theft is literally not paying people their due salary.
Several of the company’s employees told the Herald-Leader in January that ARC regularly paid workers late. In Perry County, several employees reported going weeks without a paycheck.
If you want a list of examples of wage theft this is it. Not paying Min Wage. Not paying due overtime. Classifying workers incorrectly to evade labor laws. Not paying your interns. Not paying into your staffer’s SS/Medicare.
It has nothing to do with increasing wages to match profits. This is when you are defrauding your staff of their contractually due salary.
Yeah you’re right but you’ve missed the mark because it’s not about the literal definition in this context its about the unfair nature of profits not being distributed fairly. That is the people in charge of valuing the work are unfairly valuing their own limited contribution above the people actually doing the thing. By looking at it in this way it can be seen as a form of theft and as the theft is happening in the form of their wages being lower than they should I don’t think calling it wage theft is that big of an exaggeration from its dictionary definition.
Also you’re stupid for being pedantic when big bird is right there about to make you wish for the comfort of being smug about definitions on an internet meme
The thing is that it muddies the waters.
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Wage theft is criminal. Basically everyone agrees it’s immoral and illegal.
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Statistically it’s the biggest form of theft in the US
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If you become aware of it you should report it, perhaps get a lawyer, and expect a payout.
If you expand the definition to include undervaluing staff, none of the above are true.
The legal use doesn’t change with colloquial use and definitions are kept specifically within the laws regardless of common use so it won’t change any outcomes?
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Yeah, doing this simply devalues the term ‘wage theft’. It’s like calling catcalling ‘rape’, except that catcalling might actually be illegal.
Yeah the point is “if profits go up, so should wages, else you’re being taken advantage of” but that’s a little more long winded than “wage theft”
Honestly it’s your problem if you think rape is less of an issue because of something that very obviously does not happen all that often.
It’s a ‘boy who cried wolf’ problem. If you start using the term inaccurately, at first you get lots of attention, then very quickly everyone assumes that when you say you were raped, someone actually just walked in on you in the bathroom.
Except nobody thinks that about rape at this doesn’t happen often enough to actually cause the change you’re describing
He will send those children straight to his plantation.
I don’t think they’re all gonna make it. And the ones that do will be forever changed.
it is not even “no increase”. wage increase not proportional to profits is wage theft and wage increase not higher than inflation is horrible management.
Expecting wage increases proportional to profits is only reasonable if you also accept cuts proportional to losses.
We already get automatic annualized pay cuts by default.
oh this definitely already happens either in the form of pay cuts or lay offs. And anything below inflation rate should be considered a cut really so you get cuts even when there may be profit. So getting a cut only when there is a loss can even be considered a win from this perspective lol.
We have that, it’s called layoffs. Except companies lay you off anyway even when there’s record-breaking year-over-year profits multiple years in a row.
“Profit is wage theft.”
FTFY
Profit is wage theft? How does that make any sense, or help anyone?
Extortionate profits is exploitation.
But profit per se is a person - or the company owners - receiving back some part of the value they created (helped create), on top of the expense put in.
Employees receive profit for their labour as salary; owners receive profit for their investment as ‘company profit’. The problem is exploit their control and position to shift more of the profit to themselves, exploiting the labour of those doing most of the work.
But calling profit wage theft means investors and entrepreneurs should get exactly zero for their investment and work getting things started: and that seems to me a nonsense take that helps nobody - unless you rename profit as ’ investor salary’.
Companies making record profits, which don’t go proportionally to all the members/labourers therein, is a wrong. And I agree with other commenters that it needs a different name.
Wage theft is a different issue that (as I understand it) is massively under-addressed but legally recognised in America/UK/etc, of robbing employees of their wages as per the agreement/contract. This crime needs attacking, and expanding the name to include things that are not legally criminal, makes it harder to tackle this one - or you need a new name for this specifically.*
To address this other kind of wage theft, where employees are robbed, legally, of their appropriate/fair share of the resulting value**, you need a separate framework of legality of fair profit sharing, and illegality of the converse.***
* Incidentally, this is a concern I have about ‘rape’ as non-consent. (And maybe sometimes a parallel concern about some uses of ‘terrorism’.) Should the couple who go into a room for sexy times, get naked, then one decides maybe not tonight, but the other emotionally presses them into it - should that be treated as severely as the man who accosts a woman in the alley at night and forcefully copulates with her? Perhaps? Should the man who forcefully copulates be treated as lax as the one who didn’t take no for an answer after they were both naked in the bedroom? …No. I hope people who actually deal with these things have ways to handle them properly, but it’s seemed to me like the definition gets expanded to make a point, “these things are also bad and you should hate them just as much!” But in the process loses the force of the worse, more specific crime.
(Sorry, long, unrelated tangent.)
** Okay, so I’m calling it ‘robbed’ now. I guess that means I’ve kind of cone round to agreeing more than I intended to.
*** And that’s your point, isn’t it! Well, I thought I disagreed with you, then it seems I’ve talked myself into something at least similar. I’ll let my long and boring comment stand anyway. It’s not 100% useless ;-)
I know you’re distinguishing between wage theft vs robbery, but especially since we are in a solarpunk community, and that has some ties to anarchism, is there really much point in distinguishing? Profit is just an owner taking for themselves what is due to the workers who produce the value, essentially stealing it. You could argue that, well the owner created the company with their investment and therefore incurred risk, but at the end of the day the only risk they incurred would result in them having to become a worker, themselves.
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I’m against any authoritarian structure, China included. At the end of the day, the state is just the threat of legalized violence, an industry monopolized by the police. Communist, Capitalist, doesn’t matter. It is unjust and stifles human freedom.
That has little to do with the ethics of profit, which are dubious at best.
Edit: actually it has everything to do with profit, as most profit seeking ventures are authoritarian and exploitative in nature
That read was an interesting journey indeed. ^^
I kinda agree with your early-on point. Wage theft has a legal definition, and profiteerig doesn’t fit that. Sometimes you need to flow with the joke, I guess.
For a real solution, I wouldn’t just tell investors or whatever that they can’t make a profit and call it a day, but rather change the entire structure of ownership so that there is nobody left who could make a profit. The people filling the (useful) roles that were formerly filled by investors, CEOs, etc. would then get just another wage/salary. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of something like that before. 🤔
You should check out Ursula K Leguin’s sci-fi novel The Dispossessed. It explores a society that has no concept of ownership at all, and the good and bad that comes with that. It’s really really good.
But the whole idea that profit/private property is inherently theft is a major tenant of Marxist theory as far as I understand it, so you saying
I wonder if anyone has ever thought of something like that before.
Is funny because people have been trying to think of solutions for the past ~150 years haha
Edit: behold my inability to sense irony lmaoo
Yeah, I’m aware of Marxism. Bit of a commie myself. That question was intended to be ironic. xD
omg lmaoooo my bad disregard that last part then
But definitely still recommend The Dispossessed if you like sci-fi or anarchist thought experiments – it’s so good
I’ll add it to my ever-expanding TODO list, thanks.
Profit is the excess resources generated when combining capital and labor. Capitalism predominately sends the profit to the holders of capital, and socialism sends the profit predominately to labor.
Profit is not wage theft. Sending that profit to investors rather than workers is.
Edit: as a matter of accounting, profit may be calculated after the workers get their checks. That’s simply an accounting thing and doesn’t really matter to a broader understanding of where the money goes.
If I make a low-ball offer on a product, and the seller just wants it gone so he accepts, is that theft?
I was pleasantly surprised at the quote I got to have my basement drywall finished and gladly hired the guy and paid him. Was that theft?
Theft has a certain meaning to it. Don’t make the English language more stupid than it already is.
Correct.
This would be very deep to a 12 year old.
That’s not correct, not even a little. How would a company stay afloat without reinvesting profits into themselves. At the very least, they have to keep their equipment working.
Or growth? Does every company need to stagnate soon as they are developed and never grow or change?
If a company spends money on itself, that money isn’t profit. Profit is the money left over which the business has no better use for (usually decided as being excess by people who will share in the profit when it is distributed)
And this line of thought is one of many ways how companies avoid taxes despite raking in ungodly amounts of money. Instantly throwing “all” that potential profit into expansion.
‘We didn’t make any profit for the past 5 years. Yes, we have grown the company 5000% since we started but we’ve made no profit, so wages will stagnate. In fact, we might have cut some positions if the stakeholders don’t see some profits soon.’
Or worse: “invest” it in stock buy-backs and thus allow shareholders to realize the profits indirectly anyways.
But that doesn’t invalidate the original observation that investments into the company and maintenance costs are not paid from profits.
I think you need to educate yourself what “profit” actually means 😜
Maintenance of equipment costs and most investments are subtracted from a company’s revenues before calculating profits.
I was under the impression that investing in your employees counts as investing in your business.
If people do their jobs so well that a company is raking in profits they deserve a raise.
That’s how the job I work at functions. It’s smallish company, but we get more raises for being competent than our larger, more established competitors give… so I’ll be staying at my current place of employment since they treat us like people.
Maybe its time we re-evaluate the position of companies in our culture. It’s obvious that capitalism has failed and is taking the world down with it.
Is it really that important that we have 50 different varieties of breakfast cereal that is all just different formulations of the same 3 ingredients?
Is it really beneficial for us as a species to have every single material need catered for instantly regardless of the long term impact?
Yeah super deep thoughts.
Sounds like you haven’t spent a second considering any systems other than all the bullshit you coalesced in.
I can’t tell if they have. I can tell you that your previous comment was about as well-crafted as a child’s when they first encounter some of the world’s evils.
“Yes, we probably shouldn’t be ravaging the world. No, all the cereal we eat isn’t probably the largest contributor to that nor is it the primary beneficiary of the competitve, economic system that has been chosen to continue.”
I can’t tell how far you’ve thought about it but that comment you sent was laughable. I can almost see it in a one-panel boomer comic being said by a protestor while the lead character says some shit like “Guess he didn’t hear breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
What a poorly tuned trollbot…
Because profit shouldn’t exist. AAt no point in time does the top of an org get to plunder all the money generated from everyone working inside it. Time and time again we’ve seen there is no actual risk to buying an already profitable business and stripping it for parts or just gleaming the profit. So why do we have to burden all the costs and risks of embedding ourselves within an organization with no clear gains? Fuck the entire system, and fuck heirarchies.
At no point in time does the top of an org get to plunder all the money generated from everyone working inside it.
??
Unless they own slave and have slave work on the company to generate revenue, worker are being paid to do work. Whether paid fairly or not, and whether they pay bonus or not, that’s another story, but saying profit shouldn’t exists is just as stupid and extreme.
Why? Why is it stupid?
So good to see that he didn’t die in the Challenger disaster.
It’s an old picture.
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Big Bird spitting facts like always.
Record profit numbers because of inflation, inadequate wage increases because of under reported inflation due to consumer price index fuckery. If we could only fix the money.
Like Heath Ledger?
Erm, you got cause and effect wrong. The record profits are a result of price gouging, and that in turn caused most of the recent inflation. These companies simply saw an opportunity to stealthy raise prices because of some market conditions after the pandemic and have people blame it on general inflation and not the greed of these companies.
Erm, so you believe the narrative told by economists, big bankers and politicians, that general inflation is low. Profits always go up in absolute numbers, price gouging or not, because our money loses its value fast.
And next you tell us to invest in gold or bitcoin 🙄
Nah, that would only increase their price and I’m still accumulating.
Waget heft? I don’t know what it is but I don’t think I’m going like it
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Folks coming in here “ðÆt’S nOt WeIdJ þeFt ĐæT’s KæPiTeLiZm!” running face first into the point and still missing it.
Also, don’t forget spending more fighting unionization than the higher wages and better working standards would cost because it’s not even about profits to these parasites, it’s about spite and getting to lord over people with nowhere else to go on short notice.
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Was tankie originally a reference to the Greek tanks that crushed Greek college students to death for protesting in '73?
