Times Union - March 21, 2014, Letter to the Editor by The Rev. Sam Trumbore - Hard-working employees are often at a significant disadvantage when dealing with their employers.

Employees sometimes don’t know that they are not being paid according to the law. Overtime is often not given appropriately. Employers liquidate their businesses without paying their workers.

A 2009 National Employment Law Project study determined workers in New York City lose $1 billion per year due to wage theft. A recent survey of fast-food workers in New York City found that 84 percent suffered some form of wage theft over the previous year.

That was supposed to be fixed with the Wage Theft Protection Act that went into effect in 2011. The problem now is that when a worker files a claim, it can take years to resolve it. Employers often appeal settlements, which takes even longer.

The state Department of Labor just does not have the required number of investigators to enforce labor law in a timely fashion. More than 14,000 cases were waiting resolution in 2013, cases that could take as long as five years to complete.

This is a very unfair hardship on low-income workers who need those wages to put food on the table and pay the rent and utilities.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature need to add funding to the Department of Labor to increase the number of investigators and judges working on these cases and decrease this backlog. The working people of New York need the assurance that employers will treat them fairly. The growing backlog of cases is not sending this message.

The Rev. Sam Trumbore
Minister, First 
Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany

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