Portal:Wage Crushers/Tactics and Trends

Wage crushers use a wide range of tactics that combine to limit wages and benefits, reduce corporate accountability, and disempower workers.

• Preemption: Preemption is a strategy used by corporate lobby groups and special interests to block and override local laws such as requirements for paid sick days. When special interests learn that the people of a local community are planning to pass a certain law they disagree with, or when such a law has already been passed, they lobby the state legislature to pass a state law prohibiting the local community from passing their own local ordinance. See the SourceWatch article on preemption for more.

• Litigation: Another strategy is litigation. The IFA sued the City of Seattle over its $15 minimum wage law in July 2014, and the ALEC-affiliated hotel trade groups AH&LA and AAHOA filed a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles in December 2014 to block an ordinance raising wages for hotel employees.

• Outsourcing: Local, state, and federal governments are increasingly outsourcing public services to private contractors in deals that often mean trading accountability, transparency, and good middle class jobs for corporate profits and low wages. Learn more on Outsourcing American Exposed and in CMD's 2014 report, "Pay to Prey: Governors Facilitate the Predatory Outsourcing of America’s Public Services."

• Wage Theft: Wage theft, which is estimated to affect up to two thirds of low-wage workers, refers to any failure to pay workers what they are owed. Forms of wage theft include withholding paychecks, paying less than the minimum wage, making illegal paycheck deductions, and misclassifying workers as "independent contractors" when they're really employees. It likely costs workers and taxpayers billions of dollars each year, and even Silicon Valley software engineers aren't immune.

• Right to Work: So-called "right to work" policies undermine unions by preventing them from negotiating contract provisions that require all workers, including non-members, to contribute to the costs of worker representation on the job. "Right to work" encourages workers to "free ride," gaining all the advantages of the union contract without paying a share of the costs of collective bargaining and worker representation. Workers in "right to work" states on average make $1,500 less and are less likely to have health and pension benefits compared to their counterparts in other states. Groups like ALEC and the National Restaurant Association have been pushing "right to work" bills at the state level for decades, and ALEC's local offshoot, ACCE, is now trying to push similar laws at the city and county level.

• Temporary Employment Agencies: Almost one-fifth of job growth in the U.S. since 2009 has been in the "temporary" labor sector, and staffing companies like Adecco and Manpower are now some of the biggest employers in the United States. Companies turn to temp. labor for "flexibility" -- being able to hire and fire workers with no warning -- and to save on labor costs by avoiding paying for unemployment, workers' compensation, and other benefits, according to Pro Publica. Insecurity and low pay aren't the only problems temp. workers face, however. Once workers are employed through layers of temp. agencies and subcontractors, they often get little training, and it becomes difficult to trace who is responsible for wage and safety violations.