Push for higher minimum wage ignites worry about enforcement

NEW YORK (AP) — As a campaign to raise the minimum wage as high as $15 has achieved victories in such places as Seattle, Los Angeles and New York, it has bumped up against a harsh reality:

Some economists, labor activists and regulators predict that without stronger enforcement, the number of workers getting cheated out of a legal wage is bound to increase in places where wages rise.

Estimates on the size of the problem vary, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that in 2014, roughly 1.7 million U.S. workers — two thirds of whom were women — were illegally paid less than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.

[...] the agency's roughly 1,000 investigators, who police 7.3 million businesses employing 135 million workers, don't enforce state and local wage laws, for the most part.

Twenty nine states now have a minimum wage higher than the federal rate, but anti-poverty activists have been campaigning hard for municipal lawmakers to bypass both Congress and their state legislatures and set wages much higher.

"There are a lot of reasons that people are fearful of coming forward and asserting their rights, even if they know the minimum wage has increased," Levitt said.

Seattle's Office of Labor Standards says that in the three months after the city's minimum wage law took effect in April, it opened 25 investigations into complaints that companies weren't complying.

Manuel Santiago, a Mexican laborer in New York City, said when he had a wage dispute a few years ago at a deli that was paying him $300 per week, for 78 hours of work, the boss threatened to call immigration officials and have him deported.

Michael Faillace, an attorney who helps underpaid workers file lawsuits to recover back wages, said there were more than enough potential clients to go around.