What Good Is a Minimum Wage If It’s Stolen?

The U.S. economy’s rapid recovery from the pandemic is granting workers a rare benefit: As employers rush to hire, prospective employees are gaining a bit of bargaining power. Yet this welcome modicum of leverage masks a deeper problem: All too often, companies break promises, steal wages and otherwise violate workers’ rights — and get away with it.

U.S. worker protections are scant by international standards. And even these often fail to protect the people they are supposed to. Take the minimum wage and overtime, where firms are estimated to underpay workers illegally to the tune of several billion dollars each year. Or take union organizing, where allegations of companies illegally firing workers abound, whether at Amazon or Google, Boeing or Tesla, Chipotle or McDonald’s, or in hundreds of other cases each year. Too often, the law on the books simply doesn’t translate into reality on the ground.