From restaurants to factories to hotels and construction sites, bosses have long tried to cheat workers of their paid labor. Be the worker an immigrant, born in the US,of any gender, a person of color or a young person just entering the workforce, bosses will find ways to cheat you– some more than others. Working off the clock, stealing tips, not paying overtime, or misclassifying workers are just a few ways bosses tend to steal wages.
Wage theft is just one symptom of the real problem at hand– a society based on exploitation is at the core of this is the wage system and how the boss uses it to extract your labor for their benefit. And if wage cheating is to their benefit, they will do that as well. We understand that the root of this exploitation is based on the endless accumulation of capital. Wage theft is part of this process.
At the core of capitalism is the extraction of surplus value from workers, including incarcerated labor. Thus the boss aims to save on labor by keeping wages as low as possible, thus shifting the costs of the workers’ survival more and more on to the workers themselves. This is what the bosses are doing when they fail to pay what a worker has earned.
Workers here in the US and globally have been battling wage theft for ages. Currently, the International Workers Association’s member sections have been fighting this method of exploitation all over the world. In Poland, Serbia, and the UK, the Anarcho-syndicalists of the IWA have used direct protest to force the bosses to pay the wages they promised workers, but then attempted to withhold. As a working class, Anarcho-syndicalist organization, Workers’ Solidarity Alliance has stood in solidarity with striking incarcerated labor and joins with the IWA in it’s week-long campaign against wage theft. Like the IWA, WSA is working for a world where nobody will rely on wages from their employer to survive; for a life after capitalism where wealth and resources are collectively controlled and each individual is free to pursue their passions.
Against wage theft! Against capitalism! For Workers Solidarity and Libertarian Socialism! Join us!
Workers Solidarity Alliance
