First they came for your house....

When Your Boss Steals Your Wages: The Invisible Epidemic That’s Sweeping America

Imagine you’ve just landed a job with a big-time retailer. Your task is to load and unload boxes from trucks and containers. It’s back-breaking work. You toil 12 to 16 hours a day, often without a lunch break. Sweat drenches your clothes in the 90-degree heat, but you keep going: your kids need their dinner. One day, your supervisor tells you that instead of being paid an hourly wage, you will now get paid for the number of containers you load or unload. This will be great for you, your supervisor says: More money! But you open your next paycheck to find it shrunken to the point that you are no longer even making minimum wage. You complain to your supervisor, who promptly sends you home without pay for the day. If you pipe up again, you’ll be looking for another job.

Everardo Carrillo says that's just what happened to him and other low-wage employees who worked at a Southern California warehouse run by a Walmart contractor. Carrillo and his fellow workers have launched a multi-class-action lawsuit for massive wage theft (Everardo Carrillo et al. v. Schneider Logistics) in a case that’s finally bringing national attention to an invisible epidemic. ...

Americans like to think that a fair day’s work brings a fair day’s pay. Cheating workers of their wages may seem like a problem of 19th-century sweatshops. But it’s back and taking a terrible toll. We’re talking billions of dollars in wages; millions of workers affected each year. A gigantic heist is being perpetrated against working people: they’re getting screwed on overtime, denied their tips, shortchanged on benefits, defrauded on payroll, and handed paychecks that bounce like rubber balls. A conservative estimate of unpaid overtime alone shows that it costs workers at least $19 billion per year.

CoT; Radicals

Translation. And exegesis

The theme of the day at the Sunday talk shows was how a seemingly normal American can become radicalized into following an extremist agenda. I am speaking of course, about David Gregory, who has given up all pretense and appears to be openly auditioning for a job with Fox News.

Overnight

enjoy

Rebels

I don't claim to know a damn thing about Syria, but I do know that in armed conflicts/uprisings/civil wars it's unlikely that one "side" are clearly the good guys.

(Reuters) - U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

Sunday Evening

Enjoy!  That's an order!

Sunday Afternoon

Busy weekend hosting lots of guests for a book release party for this book which you should all buy and read.

Sunday Morning

As usual, Avedon has some great links.  I missed this goodie:

Just the other day, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers said, 'If the cost of solar panels keeps coming down, installation costs come down and if they combine solar with battery technology and a power management system, then we have someone just using [the grid] for backup.' What happens if a whole bunch of customers start generating their own power and using the grid merely as backup? The EEI report warns of 'irreparable damages to revenues and growth prospects' of utilities.

XVI

David Waldman's weekly #GunFAIL compilation. From David's summary:

This week's compilation includes three God-given-but-somehow-forgotten guns, four accidents while cleaning loaded guns (which nobody ever does, though I've now found 102 who've done it so far this year), two home invasion shootings, one NRA-certified instructor shooting himself, six law enforcement officer FAILs, two more turkey hunters shot, and 10 kids accidentally shot, nine of whom either shot themselves or were identifiably shot by other kids under the age of 16. The victims are (or were) ages 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 14 and 14. All were accidentally shot within a seven-day span, from April 27th through May 3rd.

David and Cliff Schecter (who also works on the guns issue) joined us at Virtually Speaking last Sunday. David noted that the NYT's Joe Nocera has been doing a similar compilation.

Update: David tweets these reports as he finds them. @KagroX.

Evening Thread

Rare

A rare apology, but that statement came from somewhere.

Afternoon Thread

Nice day here.

The Worst Person In The World

Niall Ferguson.

Permission

This "permission structure" business illuminates the centrist Democrats approach to revoking the New Deal.  Bi-partisan commissions, historic presidencies, hostage-taking, tribalism are all tools for obtaining permission to violate core values that poll really, really well.

Thread

The Reviews Are In!

Who amongst us does not want to buy a "wonderful first novel" which "has the feel of an instant classic?"

The Worst Person In The World

Andrea Tantaros.

The War on Curb Cuts

At least I have allies.

Afternoon Thread

Blogging seems hard today. Have a video.

So Weird

Really just weird.

Jobs

+165K, unemployment at 7.5%. This will be hailed as good news, but it isn't really. Not bad news, but not good enough news.