Forum Post: Big win for labor in Chicago

"In low-wage industries,” said Kader, “it’s standard practice to be practicing wage theft.” Now, he said, “there’s another force that they have to reckon with, which is the threat of losing their license.” Advocates say Chicago is now the second, and the largest, U.S. city with such a law on the books. San Francisco was the first.

Of course, on paper, refusing to pay workers the wages you owe them is illegal everywhere. So why does the problem persist? Part of the answer is anemic enforcement. A 2012 report from the Progressive States Network noted that the ratio of federal Department of Labor enforcement agents to U.S. workers has fallen from one for every 11,000 in 1941, to one for every 141,000 today. When state labor agents are factored in, the authors found “less than 15 percent of the total enforcement coverage workers enjoyed decades ago.”

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This is why we have to beat the little whiners who cry about how government is too big. What they really mean is that they might get popped stealing from the people.