Wage Theft in America
Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid—And What We Can Do About It
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$17.95 / £10.99
PAPERBACK ORIGINAL The shocking, insidious way employers cheat their workers, with a blueprint for changing policy, from the nationally recognized social justice organizer
Anka’s first job was with the quintessential sweatshop employer. He stole wages. He stole workers’ health. He stole people’s dignity. And the way our laws are structured and enforced make it almost assured that no one will ever catch up with this employer.
—FROM WAGE THEFT IN AMERICA
—FROM WAGE THEFT IN AMERICA
In what has been described as “the crime wave no one talks about,” billions of dollars worth of wages are stolen from millions of workers in the United States every year—a grand theft that exceeds every other larceny category on record annually. Between two and three million workers are paid less than the legal minimum wage. More than three million are misclassified by their employers as independent contractors when they are really employees, allowing employers to shirk their share of payroll taxes and illegally deny workers overtime pay. Even the Economic Policy Foundation, a business-funded think tank, estimated that companies annually steal $19 billion in unpaid overtime.
Nationally recognized labor activist Kim Bobo’s Wage Theft in America is an incisive handbook for activists, organizers, workers, and concerned citizens on how to prevent the flagrant exploitation of America’s working people. Bobo offers a sweeping analysis of the crisis, citing hard-hitting statistics and heartbreaking first-person accounts of exploitation at the hands of employers. She then offers concrete solutions, with special attention to what a new presidential administration can do to address one of the gravest issues facing workers in the twenty-first century.
Kim Bobo is the founder and executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice and a columnist for Religion Dispatches (www.religiondispatches.org). She is the author of Lives Matter: A Handbook for Christian Organizing and the co-author (with Jackie Kendall and Steve Max) of Organizing for Social Change, the most widely used manual on progressive activism in the country. She lives in Chicago.
Nationally recognized labor activist Kim Bobo’s Wage Theft in America is an incisive handbook for activists, organizers, workers, and concerned citizens on how to prevent the flagrant exploitation of America’s working people. Bobo offers a sweeping analysis of the crisis, citing hard-hitting statistics and heartbreaking first-person accounts of exploitation at the hands of employers. She then offers concrete solutions, with special attention to what a new presidential administration can do to address one of the gravest issues facing workers in the twenty-first century.
Kim Bobo is the founder and executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice and a columnist for Religion Dispatches (www.religiondispatches.org). She is the author of Lives Matter: A Handbook for Christian Organizing and the co-author (with Jackie Kendall and Steve Max) of Organizing for Social Change, the most widely used manual on progressive activism in the country. She lives in Chicago.
Spring 2009
paperback
5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 336 pages
978-1-59558-445-8
paperback
5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 336 pages
978-1-59558-445-8
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