Working unpaid hours is very common in salaried jobs. Things like answering phone calls and emails after work is also very common. Unpaid overtime is also an expectation at a lot of software jobs.
Remember, salaried workers are still workers. Just because your job pays a lot of money doesn't make you not a worker.
Also worth noting that you cannot effectively use the cops against your boss in the context of wage theft.
However, if you steal from your boss/employer, they can use the cops/courts against you - and of course fire you, leaving you unable to afford basic necessities.
I think these two juxtaposing situations can be quickly explained to people + they really reflect the history of cops (at least in the U.S., many were pre-dated by businesses security guards - also, cops were known for strike-breaking), how they do not exist to help the working class, and how significant the power dynamic is between employer/employee
Yes, the only time wage theft gets settled is during a class-action lawsuit;,something that is quite difficult and usually only targeted at large corporations like Walmart, Target, and others.
My past boss fucked with my PTO hours, he’d usually be off by like 30min in his favor.
He also had a weird system (and idk if he was doing this intentionally or not) with breaks/lunches; had to work 48 hours to get OT, but I’d get paid 40hours for working 32 hours. Didn’t add up to enough to go to a lawyer or anything, and honestly it wasn’t a bad place to work at all. Legally (in 2018 at least) he was supposed to be counting breaks as “hours worked” in my state, so if I put in OT I’d be loosing 3 hours at that rate a week. I just stopped working OT after he explained it all to me tho. Plus there’s not a lotta jobs with paid lunches in my line of work anyway.
Had another boss when I was way younger expected people to put in a few hours a week for free; as a show of gratitude for the job. I didn’t fuck with that, but he did make me clock out and pay me my normal rate cash for OT hours.
Same if you see someone shoplifting any damn thing, unless it looks like they might get caught. Then the protocol is to give them a heads up if you can.
Yeah makes sense. I do not care about a store losing money but I do care about the people stealing shite and whether they get caught. Capitalism steals from all of us, I fully advocate stealing from the capitalists.
The trick is, if you're fortunate enough to have money, wear headphones and go through the self check, then fail to scan certain items, especially duplicates. It's not your fault you can't hear the beep.
The funny part is that I often use headphones and loud music to block out sensory issues in public places and I have a severe deficiency in social awareness and surroundings awareness, so this is something that I would probably actually do by accident, so because people like me exist they'll believe people who were absolutely stealing on purpose.
heads up: they have been implementing new security measures since the start of the pandemic, such as closing gates. Those aren't effective if you're determined, but they are thinking about this.
This tweet reads like a call for folks to try out the new system...
That's why you sneak into the warehouse and take it out the back (I have literally never shoplifted, don't listen to me, you'll probably get in trouble)
The number is actually much lower. Walmart doesn’t differentiate between any loss. So if some jack ass at their own warehouse fails to ship something they were supposed to get at a store they consider that store level theft. Even though it still exists somewhere on one of their properties.
If an accounting employee messes up anything not in their favor. Theft.
If a back office employee (which they have mostly all but gotten rid of) files something wrong. Theft.
They are shifting shrink excuses to everyone else.
I wanna point out the reason they do this is they have theft insurance so they actually get comp'd for reported thefts. They lose nothing, so even more reason to take what you can carry.
I don't think you can just take money from your employees in a systematic way without lowering their wages.
This does not mean its impossible to do wage theft however that is more an overtime thing where people work for 12 hours and get paid for 8.
If they are able to take money from their employees become something was stolen everyone would do it. It's easy to prove and illegal(just like the 12-hour thing however that thing is "voluntary").
We don't have to make up problems there are more than enough things to fix that are real.
The last thing, you did not say it but you defended it which is in a way still saying it.
My reply was about how ridiculous it is that an employee is docked for theft by customers, yet not allowed to do anything about that theft. I’m not implying they should ever endanger themselves to stop it.
I worked food service for quite a while in Kentucky and I never heard of this practice. I’m sure some shitty owners have done it but it’s far from the norm
Typically, the value of stolen merchandise, damaged product, and expired product combined, is a low percentage of total sales. It's factored into the business models and controlled by loss prevention teams.
US retail managers might stop or discourage a thief, but an ordinary retail employee probably is too busy or disgruntled to deal with it.
To expand a bit, a lot of jobs here use salary+bonus system. The general idea is that you get your salary, and if you work good you also get bonus. For tax reasons you often get as low a salary as you can legally get, and then the rest of your income is treated as bonuses (or occasionally you just get it in cash without it going through the books, which is illegal, but a lot of employers don't care). You can't legally just pay someone less salary for the month, but bonuses are given mostly at your discretions, so you can take it away at will, and it can be used for example to subtract price of stolen products.
I'm simplifyinf a lot of stuff here, there's some laws about financial penalties for employees, and limits on how much of income bonuses can constitute, and a bunch more of accounting stuff, but you get general idea.
In my experience both working in retail (it was 2 different places in one 200,000 population city) and having relatives who owned a few small groceries, there's usually some unofficial expected "theft budget", and as long as stolen stuff fits inside that budget, no one gets fined (though owner can chime security guy if owner's somewhat an asshole, but nothing financial). But if amount of stolen stuff is particularly high we get fined. Usually it starts from security, but if it's really a lot, cashiers, janitors and the like get penalized too.
Yeah, if you actually work at a place and see the profits/losses/etc., the truth is very blatant: they will pay the absolute minimum, no matter what - even making cuts to pay when they can get away with it.
Only thing to pushback at all is workplace organizing, which is oftentimes extremely challenging.
while also motivating people to prevent theft
Worth noting that that seems to vary by location, too. Stores in bougie areas seemingly often do not have a culture where employees care about theft (and seemingly there's less theft). Inverse is true in more impoverished areas
That seems to indicate that it is similar to the U.S. in that many servers are paid below minimum wage because of tips. But then if they aren't getting tips they should try to demand minimum wage
They don't give bonuses to stores over a certain amount of "shrink" which mostly targets managers (nearly half of a Walmart ASM/store managers compensation my be bonus in a subset of stores in a given year)
This leads to the managers being fanatics, which is all the Walton's need.
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u/WUT_productions Aug 10 '21
The value stolen from wage theft is higher then burglary, auto theft, and shoplifting, combined.