Wage theft occurs when workers are not properly compensated. If a company is in this category, it faced allegations of violating wage laws, such as failing to pay minimum wage or overtime, and was fined or reached a settlement.
Sources
Violation Tracker contains more than 114,000 entries on wage and hour cases dating back to 2000, with over $17 billion in penalties. Seventy percent of the cases were handled at the federal level by the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD). These entries are drawn from the Wage and Hour Compliance Action Dataset, along with press releases from the agency.
Nearly all of the remaining cases come from state labor departments and attorneys general but we do not have cases from all states. There are several reasons for this. Some states leave enforcement to the WHD or they focus only on smaller cases whose penalties fall below our $5,000 threshold. Other states are engaged in enforcement but do not put their case data online and have not responded favorably to our open records requests. By far, the largest number of our state cases (nearly 19,000) come from California, where the Labor Commissioner’s Office created an online portal with extensive case information.
We also have cases from local regulatory agencies, such as Denver Labor or Seattle Office of Labor Standards, which have been set up to focus on wage theft. Local cases are sometimes brought by district or city attorneys.
Violation Tracker also contains almost 1,700 entries on significant wage and hour collective action lawsuits, with total settlements and awards of $12 billion.
Search Techniques
Violation Tracker offers multiple ways to locate wage and hour cases. In the Basic Search on the homepage, you can combine a company name with an agency from the Federal Regulatory Agency dropdown.
The best way to access wage and hour cases is through the Advanced Search page. Here you can combine a company name and/or other variables with the wage and hour violation choice in the Offense Type dropdown. You can also limit the search to cases involving violations of specific laws such as Davis-Bacon Act, Equal Pay Act, Public Contracts Act, Service Contract Act and WARN Act. You can use the Full Text search box to search relevant words or phrases mentioned in the description field of the individual entries. Use the Level of Government dropdown to limit your search to federal, state or local cases.
On the Summaries page you can retrieve an overview of all employment cases (not just wage theft) from the Offense Group Summaries dropdown. You can also find such overviews for the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division or other agencies from the Federal Agency Summaries or State/Local Agency Summaries dropdowns. The Current Parent Summaries include breakdowns by offense categories, including wage and hour violations.
To locate wage and hour collective action lawsuits, go to the Advanced Search and choose private litigation from the Action Type dropdown and the wage and hour violation choice in the Offense Type dropdown. Private litigation entries include full case citations. Violation Tracker subscribers also have access to key court documents such as settlement agreements.
