s.e. smith writes, Is Cutting Benefits For Public Workers Actually Wage Theft? Reframing the Right's Attacks On Unions:
Compensation for work performed is not guaranteed in the United States, even with significant worker protections in place, thanks to the actions of unscrupulous employers. Employers may withhold overtime pay owed, pay less than minimum wage, renege on benefits contracts, and engage in other activities that labor activists label as wage theft; in all of these cases, an employee works as agreed, and does not receive payment or other forms of compensation in return.
"Wage theft" sounds more aggressive, and flashy, than terms like "withholding compensation," which is exactly why organizers started popularizing the term in pushes like the Retail Action Project's attempt to recover unpaid overtime for workers at clothing retailer Mystique and advocacy work on behalf of vulnerable immigrant laborers.
The wage theft meme spearheaded by private sector unions represents a significant rhetorical victory on the part of the left to capture public attention. Paired with hard action in the form of pushes for regulatory compliance with overtime, minimum wage and other laws pertaining to employee compensation, it has also created positive changes for workers. Justin Molito, an organizer with the Writer's Guild of America East (WGAE), a private sector union that has worked extensively on this issue, says “It's important to call it what it is, which is wage theft. When somebody robs a bank, they call it theft.”
There are direct tie-ins with this meme and the current pensions crisis for beseiged public employees, if union organizers, workers and the public are ready to go there. By reframing the debate on the pensions crisis to emphasize that proposals to cut pensions amount to wage theft, the tone of the debate changes, as does the approach to resolving the situation. ...
At Daily Kos on this date in 2008:
Describing a "striking lack of recollection" by White House and military officials, a House committee announced yesterday that they still can't determine who was responsible for turning Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire into a political pep rally in 2004. Yes, quite the mystery, isn't it?
And while some might characterize the "striking lack of recollection," as lies or obstruction of justice, the committee instead went with:
...affirmative acts created new facts that were significantly different than what the soldiers in the field knew to be true.
Thank God for oversight, eh?
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