At an 11 am press conference yesterday outside a Brooklyn KFC restaurant, fast food workers and activists released a new report alleging rampant wage theft in their industry, one of the fastest-growing in the United States. The report includes results from an Anzalone Liszt Grove research survey of 500 of the city\u2019s fast food workers, in which 84 percent reported that their employer had committed some form of wage theft over the previous year.<\/p>\n
Yesterday\u2019s press conference follows strikes by fast food workers in five major cities within six weeks, all demanding raises to $15 an hour and the chance to form unions without intimidation. The report, \u201cNew York\u2019s Hidden Crime Wave: Wage Theft and NYC\u2019s Fast Food Workers,\u201d is being published by Fast Food Forward, the campaign behind the strikes in New York. It lands on the same day as a New York Times article reporting that New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman \u201cis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reached by e-mail, a spokesperson for the National Restaurant Association told The Nation, \u201cWe fully support compliance with all state and federal wage and employment laws.\u201d The attorney general\u2019s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWage theft\u201d is a term popularized by activists and advocates over the past decade to describe a wide range of ways in which companies fail to pay employees the wages they\u2019re legally owed. The Fast Food Forward report identifies several types of violations as prevalent in the city\u2019s fast food industry: employees working, without pay, before or after their shift; employees working overtime without being paid time-and-a-half; employees working during their breaks or not receiving breaks; and delivery employees not being reimbursed for expenses like gasoline or safety equipment.<\/p>\n
The report quotes McDonald\u2019s worker Elizabeth Rene, who says she loses up to $75 a month because she isn\u2019t paid for the time she spends counting the register before and after her shift: \u201cI feel cheated and used and like I\u2019m not appreciated for my hard work.\u201dA 2008 study by the National Employment Law Project estimated that the average low-wage worker loses 15 percent of his or her annual income to wage theft.<\/p>\n