We had a good round of what’s-wrong-with-unions in the tense days when a BART strike seemed imminent. As a counterbalance, consider the results of a new study that found that nearly 70 percent of low-wage workers had been cheated of pay in the last week.
Additionally, as a result of pressure from supervisors, just “8 percent of those who suffered serious injuries on the job filed for compensation to pay for medical care and missed days at work stemming from those injuries.”
“[W]omen were far more likely to suffer minimum wage violations than men, with the highest prevalence among women who were illegal immigrants. Among American-born workers, African-Americans had a violation rate nearly triple that for whites.”
“One in five workers reported having lodged a complaint about wages to their employer or trying to form a union in the previous year, and 43 percent of them said they had experienced some form of illegal retaliation…”
Do you support unions? If not, how can labor laws be enforced when workers are bullied into silence?