I’m glad that the city of Seattle is making a serious effort to crack down on wage theft.
Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and other officials warned Thursday that the city will investigate and prosecute when businesses fail to pay employees what they’re due, after five fast-food workers filed police complaints saying they’d been cheated out of pay.
“Wage theft is a crime,” McGinn told a news conference and rally on the steps of City Hall. “An honest day’s work deserves an honest day’s pay.”
Seattle passed a law two years ago specifying that wage theft falls under the city’s regular theft statute and can be prosecuted as such, but no one ever has been charged with it. The law also allows the city to deny or revoke business licenses for those convicted of wage theft in the past 10 years.
Over at the SPD blotter, Detective Jeff Kappel lets people who have been the victims of wage theft know how to file a complaint.
The “Conservatives” are already terribly irritated at having to give people money at all. They’ll say it straight up, that work is an honor and a duty to perform, and having workers demanding money is totally unfair and un-American.
Wow. Read the comments. Few cares that the mcworkers were ripped off, they seem fine with that. All they do is gripe that politicians don’t do their jobs. When McGinn does his job, they claim he’s pandering.
too many just parrot right wing talking points. It could have been an article about fill dirt and they would have posted that their taxes were too high.
So, the complaint to the police department was made on Thursday, the comments by the mayor were made on Thursday, apparently the company was contacted on Thursday and likely had absolutely no ability to provide a specific response because it had zero information immediately at hand, and the AP/KOMO piece was posted on Thursday.
How coincidental that all of that happened in one day. I’m sure it has nothing to do with McGinn’s upcoming primary, and that none of it was coordinated in any way whatsoever.
@ 3
So, to you this is just pandering then?
@ 4
Not necessarily. I’m just unwilling to accept it as written, at face value.
The article states that previous complaints didn’t warrant charges. Wouldn’t be the first time a baseless complaint was filed. What information does the article provide that creates belief in the accuracy of the complaint this time? There is none. It’s hearsay timed to enable a one-sided piece published within a workday’s time of the complaint being filed.
I have no idea whether the allegations are factual. All I did was point out how it all came together so conveniently quickly.
Read it again. Did the company have enough time to research the allegations and provide any type of response? Was the company shown the complaint, or merely told that a complaint had been filed, and then was asked for a comment?
A little googling makes it clear that this isn’t Ms. Durocher’s first time in the spotlight. She was quoted all over the place, including in The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/blog/.....z2aDBq2AOS
while walking off the job in May to protest low wages.
At a brown-bag lunch thing:
http://www.thestranger.com/sea.....d=17330116
she apparently testified before the City Council about her complaints.
And then yesterday in a very coordinated manner
http://slog.thestranger.com/sl.....ints-today
she and others made police complaints and then participated with the mayor and others in a news conference to announce it.
Within hours the piece was published. No doubt AP and KOMO had advance notice of the event. Her employers? My guess is not so much.
I cannot speak to the accuracy of her complaint. I do suggest she’s got her own little Seattle fast-food Medea Benjamin complex going on.
I’m a little surprised it was so straighforwardly parroted the way it was in the above post. At least The Stranger had the decency to state as the first word in their article title that the abuses are alleged.
But then, I’ve been away for awhile.
@6. So, she’s publicly trying to get exposure to the problem. The Koch brothers are on the record in many many places saying they want to get rid of the minimum wage. That’s true too.
http://thinkprogress.org/econo.....?mobile=nc
Paid your debt yet?
@ 7
So, she’s publicly trying to get exposure to the problem.
Yes, in the same manner that, say, Gloria Allred does, or Al Sharpton, or Chuck Schumer, for any particular problem.
The thing is, no one ever remembers who it was that Gloria Allred represented last, and they certainly don’t recall why. They just remember Gloria Allred.
@6 So if she tells her story to two different media outlets that makes her an attention-seeker and liar?
I have news for you, Doctor Dimbulb. People like you who pick on minimum-wage workers because they complain about being required to do work for which they’re not paid are lower than the stuff that gets on your shoe soles when someone is walking a puppy on the sidewalk ahead of you.
What do you charge for your services? $250 an hour? I’ll bet you’d raise holy hell if an insurance company refused to pay for 5 minutes on one of your billings.
@8 Would you like it better if, instead of complaining to the media, she quietly sent her account to a Mafia collection agent? That’s what I would do. Screw the publicity, all I want is my money.
Every year, around Easter, humans go to pet stores and bring home rabbits because they think we’re cute, adorable, and lovable. Can you believe that shit? They have no fucking idea what rabbits are like …
Oh, god – we’ve got cheapshotBob back with his snide, wealthy suburban Republican push back.
I doubt it will go better for him than last time.
Shoulda stopped there….
Now he’d have us equate an exploited, low-wage worker with…..GLORIA ALRED!!! MEDEA BENJAMIN!!
AL SHARPTON!!!!!!
(As if those were scathing indictments in the first place)
It seems that cheapshotBob is deeply, deeply bothered that the woman at the forefront of the wage theft issue might have allies, might have a coordinated media strategy, that there might be a mayor’s race going on and that the sitting mayor, whose politics neatly parallel this issue, might be jumping on their bandwagon.
*YAWN*
BobFail™
In BobWorld, low wage workers (Trogs?? Epsilons??) do what they’re told, live in fear, have no alternatives, take what they’re given, don’t talk back, fade into the background and are grateful to the ‘maker’ that deigns to employ them.
Prick.
I’ve seen that mindset described as:
“Conservatives say if you don’t give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they’ve lost all incentive because we’ve given them too much money.”
― George Carlin
@ 12
exploited, low-wage worker
How do you know this? She’s 21, lives in Shoreline, commutes to Ballard for the late shift. How do you know she isn’t living at home, going to Shoreline CC, and working PT?
@ 9
What do you charge for your services?
Enough that I’m not so insecure that I feel the need to announce to HA on a nearly daily basis how much I made that day in the stock market.
or
Enough that my marginal tax rate and my investment tax rate went up on January 1. This should please you, as I’m one of those successfully soaked by the targeted tax increase.
Take your pick.
@15 I like #2. As for #1, your jealousy is not my problem.
@15 “Enough that I’m not so insecure that I feel the need to announce to HA on a nearly daily basis how much I made that day in the stock market.”
You’re a complete blockhead. You’ve missed the point I’m making completely. You’re so dense George Zimmerman could shoot you between the eyes and the bullet would bounce off! I’m pointing out how obscenely disincentivized doing honest work has become in our system. Workers should be idolized and coddled, and speculators and flippers should be treated as pariahs; instead, it’s the other way around. We’re going to lose our economy and our society if this continues.
Of course, Doctor Dimbulb doesn’t want to hear this, because the people who adulate on Wall Street banksters and hate on working people are his own faction — conservatives. They’re the whole fucking problem with almost everything that’s wrong with our country. To hear these bullshitters rant, you’d think it was food stamp recipients who ran the economy into the ground, and the greedy bankers living in $100 million mansions had nothing to do with it.
It’s gotta be tough being a conservative, because conservatives on the wrong side of everything. Literally everything. The whole conservative movement is like a slug invasion in our gardens. Let’s everyone just pour salt on them and watch them curl up and die.