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18 May, 8 tweets, 3 min read
Happening now! Watch the livestream here: epi.org/event/prosecut…
There's a growing number of district attorneys and state AGs prosecuting cases against employers for crimes like wage theft and workplace safety violations, says our moderator @TerriGerstein. More should join the effort.

Read our new report to learn more: epi.org/publication/fi…
"Wage theft is pervasive," says @JosePGarza, DA for Travis County in Texas. Travis County has added “wage theft” to a form allowing for online reporting of certain crimes.
.@DADoughertyCO in Boulder County co-hosted a training on prosecution of wage theft and human trafficking, and has also played an instrumental role in promoting stronger anti-wage theft legislation in Colorado.
Historically crimes against workers have not been prosecuted. More often, the criminal justice system has intervened to protect employers; for example, a worker stealing from an employer would likely face charges, while an employer committing wage theft likely would not.
Several district attorneys have created dedicated units or subunits specifically for investigating employer crimes against workers, including Philadelphia DA @DA_LarryKrasner.
In 2020, the @HennepinAtty office won convictions against the owners of a drywall company for insurance fraud & theft by swindle, based on allegations that the company underreported employees on workers’ compensation documents & wrongly treated workers as independent contractors.
The growing role of DAs and state AGs in this work is important in light of the limited options for enforcing workers’ rights and employers’ increasing use of forced arbitration clauses, which prevent workers from suing in court.

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More from @EconomicPolicy

Economic Policy Institute Profile picture
17 May
Historically, wage theft and other crimes against workers have not been prosecuted. But state and local prosecutors are increasingly fighting workplace abuses, and more should join the effort.

Read our new report by @TerriGerstein & @LWPHarvard: epi.org/publication/fi…
This development is important in light of the limited options for enforcing workers’ rights—as a result of the underfunding of labor enforcement agencies—and employers’ increasing use of forced arbitration clauses, which prevent workers from suing in court.
Employer crimes like wage theft, worker misclassification, unemployment insurance tax evasion, and workplace dangers are widespread, with serious consequences for workers, communities, and local economies. More district attorneys and state AGs should get involved in this work.
Read 4 tweets
Economic Policy Institute Profile picture
12 May
Nonlicensed school staff receive low pay and no employment during the summer months. Illinois is supporting these vital workers by offering unemployment benefits during the summer. Minnesota—which is considering a similar bill—should follow suit. epi.org/blog/illinois-…
Workers in the most common nonlicensed education occupations—like janitors and bus drivers—are paid less than the typical U.S. worker, whose median wage is $19.38/hour nationally.
This undervalued work is disproportionately done by women and workers of color. Women, Black workers, and Hispanic workers are all disproportionately represented in the nonlicensed school workforce.
Read 4 tweets
Economic Policy Institute Profile picture
12 May
The American Rescue Plan is highly unlikely to lead to any durable uptick in inflation or interest rates—the normal indicators of economic “overheating”—and it would be a sign of its success if it did. epi.org/blog/the-u-s-e…
The U.S. economy has run far “too cold” for decades, largely due to the enormous rise in income inequality redistributing income to richer households that save most of their income. Unless inequality is substantially reversed, economic overheating is highly unlikely.
The Fed itself has been far more worried about too-low inflation than overheating in the last decade. They have stressed that their 2% inflation target should not be interpreted as a hard ceiling above which inflation is never allowed to go.
Read 5 tweets
Economic Policy Institute Profile picture
11 May
Recent economic data suggest labor shortages in leisure and hospitality have popped up—but there is little reason to worry about spillover into the rest of the economy and no reason to rein in stimulus or unemployment benefits. epi.org/blog/restauran…
The leisure and hospitality labor market is highly segmented off from other sectors, and wage pressures—upward or downward—have typically not spilled over from it to other sectors. For example, jobs in leisure and hospitality have notably low wages and fewer hours.
Millions of workers in accommodations and food services lost their jobs during the COVID-19 economic shock, and wage growth tanked. Yet very little of this sectoral distress spilled over into wage growth in other sectors, which saw only the smallest dip in wage growth trends.
Read 11 tweets
Economic Policy Institute Profile picture
10 May
The skills explanation offered both administrations “an excuse for what was a systematic deploying of policy to disempower workers,” argues @LarryMishel, a senior fellow at EPI who previously served as its president. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
“To Mishel & like-minded critics, the skills-gap theory couldn’t account for two key trends: the rising share of income & wealth concentrating in the top 1%, and the slowdown in wage growth even among college graduates, who were supposed to benefit from the digital revolution.”
“The center-left has totally abandoned, and appropriately so, that framework for understanding wage suppression and inequality,” says @LarryMishel. “What’s replaced it is a greater attention to the increases in employer power.”
Read 4 tweets
Economic Policy Institute Profile picture
19 Apr
Two new reports released today as a part of our Unequal Power project show how unequal bargaining power sabotages workers’ ability to protect themselves and obtain adequate compensation for the risks they face on the job. epi.org/unequalpower/
The first report by @AnnRosenthal6 demonstrates how employers retain considerable powers over their workers’ abilities to protect themselves from injury, illness, and death, despite constraints created by the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act. epi.org/unequalpower/p…
Whether it's being able to decide when—or whether—to use the bathroom or having the ability to refuse to perform particularly hazardous tasks, workers are at the mercy of potentially dictatorial employers.
Read 10 tweets

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