Seattle City Councilmember Tim Burgess is sponsoring legislation to make "wage theft" a crime.
Of course cheating someone out of earned wages is wrong and should incur serious consequences, which it already does. The proposal is to add criminal penalties.
The primary motivation here seems to be making a show of helping illegal immigrants, while not holding them accountable for their own violations.
Ironically, this measure could have the unintended consequence of helping to reduce illegal immigration. One of the attractions of illegal immigrant labor is its greater willingness to work outside the constraints of labor laws. As the regulatory gap between illegal immigrant and other labor narrows in practice, there will be fewer jobs available to illegals and consequently less of an incentive to relocate here illegally.
Burgess was a conservative Republican before reinventing himself as a left-wing Democrat to run for Council. Even if inadvertently, he might be advancing conservative policies at City Hall after all.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 31, 2011 09:30 PM | Email ThisThe primary motivation is to prevent theft from our most vulnerable workers:
Now, many workers, in such industries as construction and janitorial, are staying on the job without pay for weeks or even months, hoping things will get better. In the end, when they do quit -- or are fired -- many are unable to get the pay employers owe them.
Even severely twisted logic can't hide the basic point:
As the regulatory gap between illegal immigrant and other labor narrows in practice, there will be fewer jobs available to illegals and consequently less of an incentive to relocate here illegally.
Which is a convoluted way of saying, if we make exploitation and theft harder for dishonest employers, such employers will have less of an incentive to seek vulnerable employees.
Who here amongst us is supposed to hate capitalism, again? Because admitting that laws are needed to protect workers sounds pretty left-wing to me.
Posted by: tensor on March 31, 2011 11:32 PMProposed Texas immigration law contains convenient loophole for ‘the help’
If you made it, say, a felony to aide illegal employment, what sane person would hire someone undocumented if they risked a felony rap?
Posted by: Joe Szilagyi on April 1, 2011 06:24 AMFor example the new $2 billion bailout discovered in Obamacare. Easter Eggs of hypocrisy and deficit. That's what is in store when you support the left.
Posted by: Jeff B. on April 1, 2011 08:25 AM