Eighty-four percent of all fast-food workers in New York City have reported wage theft in a new report titled “New York’s Hidden Crime Wave: Wage Theft and NYC’s Fast Food Workers.” The results are expected to strengthen the surging movement in the fast food industry calling for a living wage of $15 per hour and the right to form a union without intimidation.
Thousands of workers have already walked off the job in five different cities over the past six weeks. Protest leaders contend that forming unions in a non-unionized industry would prevent these type of alleged abuses from occurring in the future.
The survey results were presented at a press conference outside a Brooklyn, New York KFC restaurant Thursday. Presenters cited data from an Anzalone Liszt Grove research survey of 500 New York City fast food workers.
The results underscore a recent wave of complaints across the fast food industry. A full 84 percent of respondents said that their employer had committed some form of wage theft over the previous year. The alleged wage theft would further reduce already paltry pay for low-wage fast-food employees who earn an average of just $9.05 per hour according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Employers can steal wages in a variety of ways, including non-payment of overtime, not giving workers their last paycheck after a worker leaves a job, not paying for all hours worked or the outright refusal of payment.
Any of the aforementioned acts violate a litany of labor laws, including the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 that offers basic workplace protects.
The report quotes McDonald’s worker Elizabeth Rene, who says she loses up to $75 a month because she isn’t paid for time she spends counting the register before and after her shift. “I feel cheated and used and like I’m not appreciated for my hard work,” said Rene.
McDonald’s did not return Mint Press News’ request for comment. A 2008 study by the National Employment Law Project estimated that the average low-wage worker loses roughly 15 percent of his or her annual income because of wage theft.
The report has been published by Fast Food Forward, the main organization behind the strikes in New York. Josh Eidelson of The Nation reports that the release occurred on the same day as a New York Times article reporting that New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman “is investigating whether the owners of several fast-food restaurants and a fast-food parent corporation have cheated their workers out of wages, according to a person familiar with the cases.”
Thousands of employees have already participated in one-day walkouts in New York, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, and most recently in Milwaukee where 200 workers walked off the job Wednesday. In addition to improved wages, workers have also demanded improvements to workplace safety. “Every worker who we have talked to has been burnt by a fire, has had grease splattered on them. Many of them didn’t go to the doctor when they probably should have,” Jennifer Epps-Addison, a protest organizer in Milwaukee, told Mint Press News.