When my wife pulled the email off our printer at 5:30 this past Friday, telling her that she had been fired, she had no idea that she was now part of the $56.4 million dollar a week problem of wage theft across the United States.

Those of you who still have pay stubs, have you busted out the calculator and made sure everything was there that should be?

You might want to.

A recent, massive study of wage theft, underwritten by four independent foundations, using a validated sample of 4,387 workers across the country, found that typical low wage worker lost $51 a week, the previous week, through wage violations.

My wife came out ahead.  She was told, in a three line email from her employer of four years that the $15 that was missing from her paycheck would be mailed to her. And that she need not return to work.

She knew she was taking a chance in communicating the fact that the check was short $15.00. The national study, “Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers” cites that only one in five communicated their wage issue to their employer. And I’m guessing that very few of that 20% did it in the way my wife did. Wage issues can be viewed, especially by those who don’t have them, as “he-said/she-said” problems requiring the delicate untangling of the trained human resources professional. Most stories have at least two sides.

But in my wife’s case of the missing $15.00; there was no dispute about whether or not she was owed the money. Only over whether she’d be paid for her work.

So when she documented that the employer was welcome to keep the $15.00, and she would only have to consider other options if this practice of not paying her what she was owed became a regular event; she knew she was taking a chance. But, as she wrote, she liked her job. And seeing that there were no other issues over the past four years; she hoped to continue.

Her case was strikingly simple. She wasn’t paid.

The national study reports that 20% of the population does not complain. Almost half of that group cited fear of loosing the job being the reason. Victims of wage theft cut across all ethnic and racial lines. Where once wage theft was almost always limited to companies of less than 100 people, that’s no longer true. Most victims are women. And the occupation hardest hit by violations?

Those, like my wife, who work with children. An astonishing ninety percent had been victims of wage theft in being shorted on overtime pay.

The research, the most comprehensive done in the past decade, paints a grim picture. Not just in the morality of how we as a country stomp on the dreams of those at the blindingly fast growing low end of the pay scale. But also in the economic enormity of the theft. Hard data tells us that we are talking about $56.4 million dollars stolen out of the paychecks of Americans. Without getting lost in the numbers, that figure comes from estimates that 1,114,074 workers in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles alone have at least one wage violation per week.

Every single week.

Money that could have been spent on food or health insurance or shoes. Money stolen so regularly that it becomes a way of life.

Wage theft, like health insurance policies, telephone charges and credit card rates; is an area where lots of people are paid a lots of money to make things complicated.  Add to that drive for complication, those who take the position; “Whenever you spot any kind of vulnerability, squish it like a bug.”

Add to that desire to prey on the vulnerable that any story of oppression always includes those who attempt to blame the victim. Even in writing this story, I expect to see some of that. That always happens.

But sometimes issues are not complicated. They are very simple. Someone works for an agreed upon amount and the other person decides not to pay them. That’s it.

My wife is not a victim. Not by any measure. She did the right thing. The brave thing. And she will get her $15.00. So no one stole from her.

As to the loss of that job, she also teaches in other locations where an issue like this one simply would not exist.

In this case, a hint as to the nature of the person who fired my wife over email is that instead of signing her name, she signed the note with the one word, “Administration.”

So for us, the event was in most ways a gift. Saturday night we spent a little time in the warm confines of our local neighborhood place. Spending that $15.00 in advance on a couple of beers and a quesadilla. Chatting with a friend.

Then we went to a family Halloween party where my brother in law put on a Barry White record and one of the kids asked, “Daddy? Is that old people’s music?”  

My wife’s biggest problem is an overprotective husband, nowhere near as nice as her, who tends to get a tad ballistic anytime the world messes with her. I’d love nothing more than to give you the name and address of the school. But I won’t.

I checked the school’s ratings on a couple of internet sites; and found that tuition paying parents had already figured out that they have better, safer choices for their children.  I won’t publish their name and address here. But if somebody asks, I’ll tell them privately. And I’m sure the legendary educator Maria Montessori would find it sad that a place with her name on the door was being run by somebody who had to sign a note “Administration” and not use their name.

But those are small issues. The big issue is wage theft.

The data from the study comes from last year.  It’s a 72 page document populated by cutting edge methodology that covers much, much, more than this snapshot.

Last year’s data means it’s pretty fresh. But it’s also before the wallop of the recession hit us all full force. Before it hit those with the least the hardest.

If it was a $56 million dollar a week problem in just 3 cities last year; the biggest questions now are:

How much is being stolen from workers now?

And given the problems on our national plate, is there a will and a way to fix this?