And culturally treating it like any other theft: a crime that should subject the thief, in a practical sense, to the risk of imprisonment.
If you steal $100 worth of food from a store, they'll call the cops and arrest you.
If the store steals wages from you in the tune of $1000+, <POOF> its a.... CIVIL MATTER (waves hands).
No one will get arrested for even stealing $1000s of dollars of luxury items on camera (at least in CA, a trend setter for other states).
https://amhsnews.org/10386/justice-awareness/shoplifting-the...
> On September 30th, 2023, Governor Newsom signed into law Senate Bill No. 553, essentially making it illegal for retail workers to confront looters, burglars, and shoplifters.
> A Walgreens employee working in San Francisco told a reporter that thieves come around 15-20 times per day
> any theft under $950 is only considered a misdemeanor, which means it doesn’t lead to anything punitive by law
Edit: Present data countering the virtue signaling and get downvoted. Keep it up folks.
And frankly, there were times in which I saw people steal food. And in those cases, I never saw a thing! Especially when formula was being "acquired".
One time, during Black Friday, someone stole a whole register full of cash. Again, not my job and not my problem.
https://city-attorney.columbus.gov/pdf/press/babyformulaband...
There are a lot of organizations that give out formula for free but not at scale required for nefarious uses.
As a parent, I feel people like you are the reason formula ends up being unavailable for real babies as you enable gangs to steal them driving up cost.
Here is a list of places with free baby formula and stuff in the Bay Area:
https://www.211bayarea.org/sanfrancisco/food/food-programs/f...
https://www.findhelp.org/goods/diapers-%26-formula--san-jose...
https://www.needhelppayingbills.com/html/san_francisco_and_s...
One advice: Stop with harmful virtue signaling. It is easy to virtue signal like you do here with looking at any data or bearing any of the real cost of virtue signaling. I will repeat. People like you are the reason formula ends up being unavailable for real babies as you enable gangs to steal them driving up cost and causing shortages during real crises. As a parent this is frustrating and rage inducing.
https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/infantandtoddlernutrition/form...
1) Support low income people by giving them formula if they need it, AND
2) End the war on drugs and move people into treatment instead of the carceral slave system
Sounds like a win-win.
You must have missed the part of the post where they stated:
>I worked at $retailer for a time, and even their statements were to "DO NOT ENGAGE SHOPLIFTERS".
"People like [them]" are being told from their employers to not engage shoplifters.
> Wilson has a history of drug offenses: felony drug abuse, felony possession of cocaine, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
"Offenses" is carrying the whole team here. All this says is that he was charged with the crime of doing drugs while black. I could have been arrested for all of these at one time in my life or another. Without a trafficking charge they're just speculating he might be a dealer.
> While a black market exists for stolen baby formula to be resold for its intended purpose, reports indicate that baby formula also is used as a cutting agent for cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine by drug dealers looking to dilute their product and stretch their supply.
So he could be cutting drugs with it, or he could just be stealing it to sell directly. He even could even be selling it to actual drug dealers. Not saying that's better but the police kinda gloss over that as presented that's the more likely option.
I promise I'm not trying to drag you or anything but I'm originally from Columbus and you have to take anything the CPD says with a shaker of salt. Columbus is a fairly boring city and so CPD always tries to punch up the stories.
It was probably all theft to exchange for drugs.
During the pandemic there was a formula shortage and allowing theft rather than punishing it probably ensured some children went without unnecessarily.
And really, if 1 out of a thousand "cuts drugs" with formula, so be it. At least that's non-toxic... and frankly, laughable as DARE propaganda.
https://www.211bayarea.org/sanfrancisco/food/food-programs/f...
https://www.needhelppayingbills.com/html/san_francisco_and_s...
Just recently there was a baby formula shortage. And we were not prosecuting gangs stealing formula. Shameless and laughable.
https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/infantandtoddlernutrition/form...
Edit: To person calling me a techbro below, I can't provide data for 1000s of cities in the US, genius. Feel free to do so.
Non tech folks also live in the US (you would know if you live in the US). Also look up why we are discussing the Bay Area.
Non tech folks also live in the US (you would know if you live in the US).
Also look up why we are discussing the Bay Area.
California, in fact, has one of the lowest felony theft thresholds out of any of the states. In fact, it has the 10th lowest felony threshold in the union. [1]
It was actually Oklahoma who started the trend to increase the felony threshold in the early 2000s.
Newsom passed the bill you referenced so that minimum wage workers aren’t playing security for their employers. This bill did not raise the felony threshold.
Do you want to know which states have the highest felony theft thresholds? It’s Texas and Wisconsin at $2500. In 2010, California went from a threshold of $400 to $950. In 2015, Texas went from a threshold of $1500 to $2500, so California’s threshold has always been much lower even in the recent past. [2]
So no, California has not actually been any sort of trendsetter when it comes to felony theft thresholds, but it certainly is a convenient bogeyman.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/felony-thef...
[2] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-bri...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/as-retailers-close-stores-...
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/28/1202264923/major-retailers-bl...
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/19/target-store-closures-theft-...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/target-closing-stores-2023-san-...
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/26/business/target-retail-theft-...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/target-stores-theft-1.69794...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11965589/The-stores...
------------------------
However, on the actual wage theft side, is scattered articles about a single bad company, or policies from stuffy think tanks and "boring" and non-sensationalized sources.
https://www.cohousedems.com/news/wage-theft-prevention-passe...
https://www.dir.ca.gov/DIRNews/2024/2024-10.html
https://www.propublica.org/article/wage-theft-law-new-york-v...
https://blog.dol.gov/2024/02/07/protecting-workers-rights-at...
https://calmatters.org/politics/capitol/2024/01/wage-theft-c...
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/19/target-store-closures-theft-...
Was there theft at that store.. I don't doubt it but never saw it in all the times i was in there searching, often without success, for some home item that would suit my place.
It was just a bad target variant store that was plopped into the middle of a neighborhood that ended up being specialized in the wrong thing, if any target mucky muck had ever walked the neighborhood before putting the store in it could have been very successful (because we could really use a store where I can buy various home goods without jumping in my car and driving 10-15m).
And if you're a person of color, if you try to pass a counterfeit $20 bill (unclear if you even know it's counterfeit) then the police just murder you and the person in charge of it gets a cheesecake sentence
The system is working as intended.
Government is quite literally a criminal organization except it was decided by someone (people, representatives, a monarch, whatever) that this particular one is not criminal and any others like it are, within self-described boundaries.
It might or might not be doing criminal things (as in, things we associate with criminal), but it wants and needs a monopoly on those things, otherwise it risks dissolution by internal and/or external forces. It’s thus obvious it’ll prioritize protecting the mafia bosses/sovereigns/elites and thugs/enforcers.
It's not just that. There are people that will outright deny that it's happening. The reasoning trotted out is that if it were true that this were happening then it would be squashed. In other words, if it were happening, then it would not be happening. From the article:
> According to a 2018 report by Good Jobs, between January 2000 to 2018, Walmart paid over $1.4bn in fines and settlements over wage theft violations, FedEx paid over $500m during the same period, and Bank of America paid over $380m.
Sans data about Walmart's $1.4bn in fines, they'll reason to themselves that Walmart, even if it's not somewhere they personally would ever shop, is a reputable company, therefore this isn't something that happens at Walmart.
I have experience firsthand (from a low spot in my life) that FedEx continues to do the same thing, especially to people who are powerless to do anything about it. To wit:
Their warehouse workers get paid low wages and the arrangement is that you need to be available between 4:00 AM and ~10:30. It's not that you'll be working during those hours. No, instead what happens is the night before they determine how high of a load they have and then set the hours for that time. So you as a worker call in at around 9:00 PM the night before, listen to a recorded message that states e.g. "On Tuesday, February 13, package sorters will begin work at 5:30". So far not so good, but there's nothing especially illegal about this is as far as I know. (It stretches morality and ethics, however.) What is illegal as I understand it is incidents where they tell you to report to work at that time, people show up, and then find that the timeclocks are papered over with a sign saying not to clock in because there was an issue at the warehouse overnight and the systems aren't running, so they've moved the clock-in time ahead 45 minutes to when they expect the systems to be up and running. You are expected to wait there off the clock despite not being paid and being expected not to leave.
One of my buddies said they did this to them. I don’t know how common it is but it does happen. They were satisfied with their pay, though, compared to what many jobs in the area offered.
Note that this is US law enforcement in general. The "if middle america were using drugs at the same rate of inner cities then we'd see arrest rates at the same levels" argument we here. While studies show that drug use is similar between these groups, enforcement in cities, specifically against minority groups is much higher.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mor...
The true crime is as always the impact on businesses.
It’s a way in which this is bad that folks may not immediately connect to it.
It's hard to tell if you meant this as sarcasm or not, but... it really is a big deal. If all your competitors are screwing their employees in order to increase their margins, that means they can out-compete your on price. Which means you can either screw _your_ employees.. or risk going out of business. And eventually, the only players left are the ones that are screwing their employees.
So yes, if you want to look out for employees, then you need to look out for businesses by making sure everyone is following the same rules. That doesn't mean the businesses themselves are more important, just that their health is vital to the well-being of the employees.
The context is that the OP complained about one business colluding with others by way of informal no-hire lists for employees that don’t tolerate this wage theft. The response to that is to focus on how other businesses that don’t collude will get out-competed…
And yeah I’m pretty sick of this framing. It’s an anecdote where employees are direct victims, and then the focus gets shifted to hypothetical and indirect victims (businesses). Even in my own social democratic place of residence there seems to be dominant narrative of “job creators” and how we need to “create jobs”, the outcome of which is to sacrifice things in order to directly benefit businesses in order to (ostensibly, in rhetoric) benefit workers. This was concretely demonstrated when, during the pandemic, the right-wing government was very insistent on giving handouts to failing businesses that obviously were going to have a hard time (like the travel industry) under the guise of “protecting jobs”. Meanwhile, the government proposed that we should temporarily make it easier for employers to put employees on temporary leave (whatever the English/American term is) in order for them to not just die. Which is fine in itself… except they wanted tax payers and workers to dis-proportionally pay for this temporary measure. What’s the only thing that made them “change their minds”? Labor groups and other such organizations.
And then there was inflation, a predictable outcome of the spending-spree during the pandemic. So the central bank raised the rent. And again. And again. And the acknowledged consequence of that was that the poorest among us would struggle to make ends meet. But that’s not a problem at all—that a predictable outcome of a previous spending spree on businesses would impact regular people and make some people have to choose between mortgage/rent or food; not a problem. That’s just Economics.
What’s the problem with corrupt politicians? On one hand you can simply say that the problem is that corrupt politicians corrupt the political system. On the other hand you can frame it as the outing of corrupt politicians causes “political distrust” and a “crisis of legitimacy” among the (stupid) voters. So you re-frame the issue as a few bad apples (politicians) which causes the real problem of voters/regular people becoming (justifiably) cynical and distrustful of the whole system. That’s the power of framing.
And that’s why I don’t buy into the framing of helping businesses in order to (pinky swear) really helping workers. Yeah, those hand-out to businesses? Oh would you look at that—a “profit party” half a year later for the shareholders. Who woulda thunk it. But too bad about that inflation, though. Guess you should rethink owning a car or having hobbies other than taking walks in the park.
No, the focus gets shifted to
> We need to make sure that businesses that _do_ treat their employees well are able to succeed. And, to do that, we make sure that treating their employees well isn't turned into a penalty. We make sure that all companies are playing by the same rules.
The thread went like this
>>> Businesses should not be able to steal wages from their employees, and we should punish them harshly
>> Yes, if businesses can get away with that, then the ones that treat workers well will go out of business
> (you) Stop making this about the business being a victim here
Seriously, what the heck. Everything about that bit of the thread was about making sure it's better for businesses to treat employees well.
It's unfair competition though, so it's really important that this doesn't happen. A restaurant that wants do to the right thing shouldn't have to worry about a few % worse competitiveness on wages because the asshat across the street has his staff work for free.
If something like this earned you a $10k fee the first time and a 5 year ban from running any kind of business in the state if you repeat it, I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem.