Remember, minimum wage in Texas is the federal minimum wage, $7.25 an hour. Texas employers have the option to only pay the minimum, then have the gall to steal what little their workers make. Slavery with extra steps.

Here’s a reminder that wage theft is the single largest form of theft, larger than every other type of theft combined. It is literally over 51% of all theft. And it goes largely unpunished, because the people being stolen from either don’t or can’t speak out about it.

And wage theft isn’t just refusing to pay someone. Employers are smarter than that, because they know something so blatant and easy to prove will get them slapped. Instead, they do things like skim off the top by unfairly adjusting your clock in/out times. Or they’ll do things like require you to show up 15 minutes before your shift, then refuse to let you clock in until your shift is scheduled to start. Or they’ll force you to clock out right when your shift is scheduled to be done, (under the guise of avoiding overtime) even if you have another 5-10 minutes of work to do. Theft by break infringement is also common, where employers will have you clock out for your break, then try to dictate how you spend your time on the break.

All of those tiny things, multiplied by thousands of employees at a large company, adds up to theft on a truly massive scale.

If you started walking into a gas station at the same time every day, and blatantly stealing a $2 candy bar, they’d have a cop waiting for you to show up by the end of the first week. But if that same gas station (with locations all across the country) systematically steals $2 from thousands of employees on every single shift, that’s a civil issue but it’s not worth the money for any single person to sue (if the employees could even afford a lawyer) and the department of labor is critically understaffed.

I do not like how the fraud of wage theft is a civil matter but taking a long bathroom break is stealing from the company.

Gosh, maybe harsh punishments should be applied here rather than on 16-year-olds caught with drugs.

Like “if you are responsible for approving time cards and there’s a significant percentage of employees who were shorted hours, you’re going to prison.”

Send in the National Guard!

Can't say I'm surprised.

While this is not good, it is good that wage theft is being reported. As nothing makes it to the news without someone pointing it out to reporters, this is a strong signal from those involved that that everyone in Texas should call their representative to complain about the investigators needing more funding.

It is a signal to everyone NOT in Texas to not go there.

I thought that the American way (these days) would be to sack the State labor investigators - problem solved

Ah, the proud, independent Texans, groveling at their governor’s feet, begging him to make their bosses pay what they’re due.

How many are against space Karen

“Right to work” for your corporate overlords for nothing or go to the camps

I think we should have a reworked economy. Aside from having UBI that grants free utilities, basic shelter, and food, I think that all occupations should have fixed incomes, tied to a rank. East Coast, West Coast, an waiter gets $40k a year. An astronaut, who has the highest ranked job, gets $100k. After taxes, waiters have $30k and the astro a $60k income. CEOs get their rank by votes from workers of their company. By fixing incomes and preventing distortions like billionaires, we can make it easier to diagnose whether a company or person are making too much money. This combined with absolute wealth caps, would make it easier to correct wealth issues.

All waiters know they are supposed to have $30k from their job, thus they can complain about the problem without bullshit excuses from businesses. Plus, free food and shelter guaranteed by government allows for unlimited unionization and job searching, which puts the onus on employers to do better: Without being able to coerce people into working, companies have to do the right thing.

We can have a government-funded department that sets the income ranks of jobs according to the amount of effort, risk, and knowledge a job requires, and makes that the standard that all employees can expect. If a job's income weirdly deviates from that of other similar jobs, workers of that occupation can unionize to force the government to properly assess the value of the job.