Wage Theft in America

Why Millions of Americans Are Not Getting Paid—And What We Can Do About It

Kim Bobo

• Publisher: The New Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781595588074
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Labour & Employment Law
• Index: Law

"This book will give you an entirely new perspective on work in America." —Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed 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. Even the Economic Policy Foundation, a business-funded think tank, has estimated that companies annually steal an incredible $19 billion in unpaid overtime. The scope of these abuses is staggering, but activists, unions, and policymakers—along with everyday Americans in congregations and towns across the country—have begun to take notice. While the first edition of Wage Theft In America documented the scope of the problem, this new edition adds the latest research on wage theft and tells what community, religious, and labor activists are now doing to address the crisis—from passing state and local wage-theft bills to establishing mayoral task forces and tapping agencies that help low-wage workers in spotting wage theft. Citing hard-hitting statistics and heartbreaking first-person accounts of exploitation at the hands of employers, this updated edition of Wage Theft In America offers concrete solutions and a roadmap for putting an end to this insidious practice.

Strengthening Enforcement

dp n="155" folio="140" ?dp n="156" folio="141" ?

9

Leadership Matters: Lessons from Frances Perkins

The righteous considereth the cause of the poor: but the wicked regardeth not to know it. Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

—Proverbs 29:7, 18 (KJV)

The Department of Labor building in Washington, D.C., is named after Frances Perkins, the most illustrious secretary of labor in the nation’s history. Her leadership shaped the labor future of the nation. Challenging the scourge of wage theft in the nation and addressing the decline of jobs that pay a living wage require leaders like Frances Perkins. Having her name on a building is not enough. The nation needs leaders throughout the U.S. Department of Labor, throughout state enforcement agencies, and even in local agencies that claim to share her vision and commitment to workers.

Perhaps because too few of us paid attention in history classes, most Americans have no idea who Frances Perkins was, despite her significant leadership role in crafting and passing the core legislation establishing social security, minimum wage, child labor protections, and unemployment insurance. People my mother’s age know her. Many people of my generation have heard the name, but don’t quite know why. Most of the young staff at IWJ never heard of her.

Frances Perkins was the secretary of labor from 1933 to 1945.¹ She was the first woman to serve in a president’s cabinet. I have her picture with a quote hanging by my desk that says, “I came to Washington to work for God, FDR, and the millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen” (thanks to a great bookmark given to me by Gerry Shea and made by the AFGE local that represents DOL workers for an anniversary event celebrating Perkins’s leadership).

Frances Perkins was raised in a middle-class family in Massachusetts. Hers was a loving Congregationalist family, and her faith informed her work. According to her biographer, George Martin, “Her religion was the source of her strength.”² It was during her time at Mount Holyoke College that she was introduced to the struggles of working people. She attended a presentation about sweatshops by Florence Kelley, the national secretary of the National Consumers’ League, that Perkins later claimed “opened my mind to the necessity for and the possibility of the work which became my vocation.”³ Also influential was a course on industrial society in which the professor sent the students to visit factories and report on the living and working conditions of paper and textile mill workers. Perkins was shocked at what she discovered. (A side note: This should encourage teachers to get students out of the classroom!)

After graduating, Perkins took a job as a substitute teacher, but began to throw herself into volunteer work at her Congregational church. After visiting the homes of factory workers, she organized a club for teenage girls working in factories, which offered classes on cooking and sewing. When the hand of one of the girls was cut off by an unguarded machine and the company shirked its responsibility, Perkins spearheaded a public protest and forced the company to compensate the girl with $100 for the loss of her hand. (Another side note: Our religious volunteer work transforms us even as it helps others.)

Two years later, Perkins took another teaching position, which required a move to Chicago. While in Chicago, she became an Episcopalian. Although her weekday work was spent in a well-to-do suburban school, her weekends and holidays were spent at Chicago Commons, a settlement house in a poor neighborhood. Dr. Graham Taylor, a clergyman and social worker who founded Chicago Commons, introduced her to labor unions. “It was Dr. Taylor who first explained unions to her as a social force that could help to improve the living conditions of workers and their families.” ⁴

Through Chicago Commons, she met Jane Addams of the Hull House (another settlement house, a forerunner of today’s workers’ centers), who would become a lifelong friend. Eventually, Perkins quit her suburban teaching job and moved into Hull House as an unpaid but full-time resident worker. At Hull House, she organized community residents to address problems and spent more time with people struggling to earn a living. Although she was only there for six months, the organizing experience clearly influenced her. (And yet another side note: Those six-month interns may change the world.)

Perkins moved back east to take a position at the Philadelphia Research and Protection Association as its sole staff person. Her mission was to help immigrant white girls from Europe and black girls from the South who arrived in Philadelphia looking for work and were often exploited by unscrupulous employers or prostitution rings. She visited rooming houses where the girls lived and employment agencies for which they worked. She wrote detailed reports on the living and working conditions of these young girls and launched a successful public campaign to clean up conditions and regulate both rooming houses and employment agencies. While in Philadelphia, she took classes at the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania, which brought her to the attention of Dr. Simon Patten, who recommended her for a fellowship to study for her master’s degree at Columbia University in New York City.

While studying at Columbia, she conducted tenement studies in a rough neighborhood in mid-Manhattan appropriately called Hell’s Kitchen. Her thesis emphasized that dealing with poverty requires more than giving food to children. Rather, society must provide “adequate incomes and adequate education to all its workers.” Perkins was hired as an investigator and then was appointed the executive secretary at the New York Consumer’s League, a group that focused on improving wages, hours, and working conditions by mobilizing consumer pressure on employers (sounds like IWJ).

As part of her job with the New York Consumer’s League, Perkins began lobbying in Albany advocating a 54-hour workweek law for women. To support the bill, she conducted investigations of various industries such as laundries, nut factories, and bakeries. She also started a study on industrial accidents when the Triangle Shirtwaist fire occurred on March 25, 1911. Perkins happened to be there that day and looked on in horror as many young women jumped to their deaths because they couldn’t get out of the building—a scene she never forgot.

dp n="159" folio="144" ?

The New York Committee on Safety, a small independent organization, was formed in response to the fire, and Perkins was hired to staff it. Perkins soon made herself an expert on factory safety so that she could lobby for reforms in Albany. The state passed a bill forming the New York State Factory Commission. Perkins was loaned from the Committee to the Commission to help with investigations. She and Commission members conducted drop-in investigations in factories throughout the state, through which she learned firsthand what kinds of reforms were needed. Eventually, thirty-six new state laws were passed to protect industrial workers, as well as a modified version of her 54-hour bill.

In 1913, Perkins married Paul Caldwell Wilson, a reform activist and researcher in New York City at Grace Episcopal Church in New York City.⁵ She continued to use her maiden name, much to the chagrin of many. They had a baby daughter, Susanna, which curtailed her work for a few years.

In 1917, Perkins became the director of the New York Council of Organization for War Service. She then worked on Al Smith’s campaign for the New York governorship, organizing women into the campaign. When Smith became governor, he appointed her to serve as one of the five members of the New York Industrial Commission. She faced huge opposition to her confirmation from manufacturers and merchants, and even some party faithful and organized labor leaders, but eventually she was approved by a large margin in the New York Senate.

Perkins served workers in New York as a labor consultant and Industrial Commission member under Governor Al Smith (1919–1920, 1923–1928) and then as labor commissioner under Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt (1929–1932). She gained experience in bringing workers and employers together in strike situations, establishing and enforcing labor codes, adjudicating workers’ compensation claims, supervising a large staff, organizing an emergency jobs service program, convening labor and business leaders to fight unemployment, assembling and using research data, crafting a program for unemployment insurance, and testifying before the U.S. Congress in support of worker-friendly legislation.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, he appointed Perkins as his secretary of labor, the first woman cabinet member in the history of the nation. She was not appointed as a token female, however. Indeed, she had incredibly strong credentials for the job, and her skills and perseverance had been tried and tested. But again, not everyone thought she should have the job, including some in organized labor. Before she would accept the position, she outlined her vision. “She proposed federal aid to the states for direct unemployment relief, an extensive program of public works, an approach to the establishment by federal law of minimum wages and maximum working hours, true unemployment insurance and old-age insurance, abolition of child labor, and the creation of a federal-state employment service.”⁶ Now that’s a vision!

Perkins spent the next twelve years in her cabinet position, during which time she played major leadership roles in creating:

• The Civilian Conservation Corps, which put six hundred thousand young men to work in camps working on conservation projects planned and supervised by the National Park Service (March 31, 1933).

• The Wagner-Peyser Act, which reestablished the U.S. Employment Service (June 6, 1933).

• A Senate resolution authorizing U.S. membership in the International Labor Organization (June 19, 1934).

• The Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which provided grants to states and public relief agencies for distributing $4 billion to families during the Depression.

• The Civil Works Administration, which provided jobs for more than four million jobless men and women, and then the Works Progress Administration.

• The National Industrial Recovery Act, which established labor and business standards during a time of economic crisis.

• The National Labor Relations Act to “promote equality of bargaining power between employers and employees and to diminish the causes of labor disputes” (July 5, 1935).

• The Social Security Act, which created a retirement insurance program for senior citizens, perhaps the most important antipoverty legislation ever passed, as well as an unemployment insurance program (August 14, 1935).

• The Fair Labor Standards Act, the most important set of labor protections ever passed (June 25, 1938).

• Health supervision in plants holding government contracts.

dp n="161" folio="146" ?

When Frances Perkins was asked what she was most pleased about, she didn’t mention this long list. Rather she talked about the impact she had on state labor laws by the regular conferences and meetings she convened between federal and state labor officials. There are many remarkable aspects of how Perkins operated, but let me mention one particularly unusual one, at least in today’s world. During her twelve years in a national leadership position, she spent one day a month in silent retreat at the All Saint’s convent in Catonsville, Maryland.⁷ Her faith undergirded her vision and practical approaches.

So why was Frances Perkins probably the most effective secretary of labor ever? Following are some of the important characteristics of Frances Perkins’s leadership that should be sought by all those in key federal, state, and local enforcement roles:

Commitment to improving conditions for workers. Commitment is demonstrated by how one lives life, not by words in a confirmation hearing. Frances Perkins demonstrated her commitment to working men and women long before she was asked to serve as the secretary of labor.

Hands-on experience with exploited workers. Perkins’s surveys of working conditions, visits to workers’ homes, and personal conversations with workers gave her a deep understanding of the problems and instilled a drive for solutions. Her concern for workers wasn’t just an intellectual or ideological perspective. It gave her righteous indignation—an anger in response to injustice. She brought a “view from the bottom” that affects how you see solutions. As I told Mr. Paul DeCamp when he was first appointed as Wage and Hour administrator in the George W. Bush administration and brought no personal experience with low-wage worker issues, the view from the top and the view from the bottom are different.⁸ No matter how nice, smart, or concerned you are, experience with exploited workers affects how you view situations.

A desire to find goodness in everyone. Even though Perkins was an advocate for workers, she sought to find goodness in all political leaders and employers. She believed that we must find common ground in the nation and work across political party lines to improve conditions for workers in low-wage jobs. She believed that the vast majority of employers do care about their workers and want to comply with the law.

Pragmatism about getting things done. Perkins would drive forward her vision, but she worked with people and compromised when necessary to get things done. Pushing progressive ideas without accomplishing anything doesn’t help workers. She was both driven and pragmatic, a powerful combination.

Toughness born from struggle. Perkins was accustomed to opponents attacking her, allies not agreeing with her, or some calling her names or poking fun at her. Her early years of work standing for workers had prepared her for the rough and tumble of national politics. She did not take things too personally, and she did not allow the attacks or criticisms to slow her down. She kept going even when a highly politicized Congress sought to impeach her in 1939 over her handling of the Harry Bridges hearings. Perkins refused to condone the anticommunist hysteria and deport Harry Bridges, the head of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union and West Coast Director of the CIO, without just cause. The Judiciary Committee dismissed the impeachment resolution.

Willingness to speak and write about workers’ concerns. In order to move an agenda forward, Perkins had to speak and write about it in public. She did so ably, giving hundreds of talks to worker, employer, religious, and civic groups. She used her bully pulpit for worker concerns. Early in 2008, I reviewed on the DOL website six months’ worth of speeches given by George W. Bush’s Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao: never once in a speech did she push an employer group to raise wages, improve benefits, or reduce workplace injuries. Chao used every speaking opportunity to talk about what a wonderful job the Department of Labor was doing and how wonderful the economy was under the current administration. What a waste of a bully pulpit.

Unfortunately, many state and federal labor department leaders use their bully pulpits to laud their agency’s accomplishments and their bosses’ administrations (the president’s or the governor’s) rather than to educate people about the problems, challenge employers to do better, and galvanize advocates to help. Enforcement agency leaders need the courage to help push the nation, not just defend their agencies.

In contrast, Perkins used her speaking engagements as opportunities to lift up the workers and advocate improvements. Even after she retired, she continued to teach at labor centers, passionately speaking to the concerns of working men and women and lifting their spirits. The nation needs someone who will talk publicly about the real problems facing workers and will challenge both employers and public officials to improve conditions, particularly for workers in low-wage jobs.

A constant advocate for workers. Perkins also pushed the president to speak about the issues. In his message to Congress on January 3, 1938, Roosevelt spoke of seeking “legislation to end starvation wages and intolerable hours.”⁹ He made the case to the American people about t...