Problems getting paid a common workplace problem, report says

A recent University of Illinois at Chicago study reports Chicago area workers lose $7.3 million per week in unpaid wages.

The study, "Unregulated Work in Chicago: The Breakdown of Workplace Protections in the Low-Wage Labor Market," also reports the Illinois Department of Labor receives about 10,000 unpaid wage claims each year.

A change in the Wage Payment and Collection Act, which sits on Gov. Quinn's desk waiting for action, defines low wages as cases where employers withhold $3,000 or less from their workers.

The bill would provide for swifter resolution of such cases, which represent 75 percent of the claims the state Department of Labor receives each year, by giving the department the power to establish an administrative procedure to process the claims as an alternative to filing a lawsuit.

Currently, those are the kinds of cases that clog up the legal system and tend to never get heard in court, said Attorney Christopher J. Williams of the Working Hands Legal Clinic in Chicago. The change was introduced at the request of the Chicago Workers Collaborative and the Working Hands Legal Clinic, both of which are working with the former factory workers at Duraco Products Inc. in Streamwood.

The UIC study also claims that in any given week, 146,300 workers in Cook County suffer at least one pay-based violation. The UIC study was part of a larger project including New York and Los Angeles.

A survey of low-wage workers from the national study revealed 43 percent who complained about a workplace issue or tried to form a union experienced retaliation, including having their hours cut, threatened with being fired, being fired or suspended, harassed or given an increased workload.

The same study also reports the average victim of wage theft loses $50 per week out of a salary of $322, which is a 16 percent loss of earnings.

The study is on the web at unprotectedworkers.org/index.php/broken_laws/index.