Low-wage workers earn even less when their employers withhold fringe benefits and overtime pay.
And workers around the country are organizing because, said David Weil, a Department of Labor administrator, they see the economy improving but “they aren’t feeling it in their own pocketbooks.”
Weil, with Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, told “KNPR’s State of Nevada” that the awareness is growing and it’s a good thing for the country.
Economists, he said, greatly fear the growing distance between the haves and have-nots.
That workers, courts and the government are paying attention is evident in recent news.
A week ago, 70 McDonald’s workers held signs and chanted against low pay at a store on Eastern Avenue and Flamingo Road. Last month, Nevada’s Supreme Court rules that topless dancers at a strip club here were employees and deserve wages.
And in October, the US Department of Labor won $2 million in back wages and benefits for 150 workers at the federally funded Crescent Dune solar energy project in Tonopah. The project was funded in part with more than $700 million in federal loan guarantees. Workers were owed money for not being paid prevailing wages and fringe benefits.
Weil said a push to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 would benefit an estimated 250,000 people in Nevada and help improve the economy.
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