llm_nerd 3 days ago

>You can't, resources are limited.

Regulatory authorities and courts enforce against wage theft. Shoplifting enforcement is mostly up to businesses.

>Shoplifting was down in most cities compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Shoplifting reports to police were down in some cities (albeit up in others), but that doesn't necessarily track the actual data.

https://nrf.com/media-center/press-releases/shoplifting-inci...

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  • no_wizard 2 days ago

    No shoplifting enforcement is done through the courts and most importantly, the police. There is a huge difference here.

    Courts incur costs between fees and lawyers, and even filing a report with the dept of labor (the typical recourse most people take at first) means you have to wait while you aren't being compensated for that time. Given wage theft in the majority of cases impacts people who can't often afford to go without those lost wages, this is a tough situation to be in, and even if you go through the labor department with a complaint, manage to get it reviewed in a timely manner (it typically takes months before hearing anything), you may still end up in court anyway depending on a number of factors.

    You could sue for the lost wages directly, but again, this becomes an issue of cost, getting the case heard and tried in a timely manner etc. This could drag on for months to years, depending.

    On the other hand, if a store sees someone shoplifting, they can and do call the police, and they can and will arrest someone for shoplifting. Its dealt with close to or during the incident occurring. Thats a really big difference in the feedback loop.

    Imagine now, that you could call the police when you have a verifiable instance of wage theft, and the person(s) responsible was arrested and you given upfront restitution pending trial. That would be the equivalent of how we treat shoplifting vs wage theft. The differences are not minor, and I imagine they're intentional on behalf of lobbying from business groups.

    If business owners or their subordinates were being arrested for wage theft I imagine things would change quickly, but there's such a lag time between actual accountability and the instance of it happening - and even when found guilty they simply pay the back wages plus penalties in the best case scenario, and thats if it gets to the point of either a lawsuit or arbitration on behalf of the labor department - that they have done the calculation that paying incorrect compensation (the most common form of wage theft) is overall costing them less than paying out labor disputes, as with anything that has hefty process attached to it without guaranteed results, it discourages the most vulnerable from engaging with that system even though they would benefit most.

    They aren't equivalent, and its disingenuous to see them as such.

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    • llm_nerd 11 hours ago

      >They aren't equivalent, and its disingenuous to see them as such.

      Nowhere in my post did I remotely claim equivalence. In actual fact, I was pointing out that they are very different crimes, with different enforcement. Trying to strawman something I didn't actually remotely say is grossly disingenuous.

      Whataboutism is grotesque. For any crime, there are always the bores doing the "yeah, but what about worse crime". It's useless noise.

      I want both crimes absolutely crushed. If someone is a shoplifting fan because they think wage theft justifes it, they're a garbage person.

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