MLK Labor hosting wage theft summit Feb. 9 in Seattle

The following is from MLK Labor:

SEATTLE — MLK Labor is co-hosting a Public Safety Summit on Wage Theft with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office (KCPAO). This summit will be on Friday, Feb. 9 from 8 a.m. to noon at the Labor Temple, 5030 1st Ave. S. Seattle. It is open to all who are interested.

“Corporations steal more than $15 billion from hard working Americans every year,” said Shaunie Wheeler James, Deputy Executive Secretary-Treasurer of MLK Labor. “Virtually none of this is prosecuted because most wage theft laws lack an enforcement mechanism. Our Wage Theft Summit will be about awareness, education and transparency. We aim to identify the many shapes that wage theft takes on in all of our industries and build a partnership with the King County Prosecutor’s Office to better prosecute this crime. If corporations are people too, why aren’t they serving time?”

The goal of this summit is to bring together labor leaders, rank-and-file workers, non-profits, prosecutors, and other stakeholders together to identify:

• What constitutes wage theft in King County
• The challenges to reporting and investigating this crime
• What steps the KCPAO can take to improve their responses to this crime, including improved and increased prosecution

Wage theft has long been a problem for people who work in King County. Unions have worked to address this crime, but employers continue to get away with stealing hard-earned money from workers’ pockets.