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Texas Can’t Keep Up with Surge in Workers’ Wage Theft Complaints - State labor investigators struggle to process more and more paycheck complaints, with millions of dollars in workers’ pay at stake. (www.texasobserver.org)

submitted 5 days ago by gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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[–] dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 34 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.”

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

https://www.victorianchamber.com.au/news/understanding-criminal-wage-theft-laws

this is the way

The new criminal offence of wage theft, which commenced on 1 January 2025, targets deliberate underpayment practices by employers.

Key changes:

Intentional Conduct: Penalties apply if an employer intentionally engages in conduct that results in the underpayment of employee’s wages or entitlements.

Liability: Both companies and individuals, such as directors, managers, or payroll personnel, can be held criminally liable for wage theft.

Severe Penalties: The penalties for wage theft include fines of up to $8.25 million for corporations, and up to 10 years of imprisonment for individuals.

It is important to note that this offence is not intended to capture inadvertent errors or genuine mistakes.

[–] dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

While I agree that unintentional errors should not be punished, in this situation it’s important to remember POSIWID. If a company’s payroll process consistently causes “mistakes” that lead to workers being paid less than they are owed, and if there is no process to audit that and correct errors without the worker intervening on their own, it’s just wage theft with extra steps.

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

afaik they deal with this in a couple of ways:

the first step is to go to the fair work ombudsman (this is a government department that handles complaints, fines and orders businesses to make restitution/changes to comply with the law on behalf of ordinary people. they’re free. we also have for example the telecommunications ombudsman, banking ombudsman, energy and water ombudsman, etc). proof required here is simply more probable than not
not correcting systemic issues that form a pattern when they’re pointed out may be used as evidence in criminal prosecution. proof here - as it’s obviously much more serious - is beyond reasonable doubt, and must require dishonest conduct

so yeah, with regard to criminal conduct, repeated underpayment and patterns counts towards dishonest conduct and this criminal prosecution