New RI law will make wage theft a felony
New RI law will make wage theft a felony
Gov. Dan McKee recently signed a new law that will change wage theft from a misdemeanor crime to a felony starting next year.
That is really interesting news. I would like to learn more about the reporting function and any protections the workers get from reporting their bosses.
Oh no, a new "cost of doing business" has been established. Honestly, what's the point of the jail time here? We have never put a company (even though we've granted them personhood) in jail.
Fines are fine penalties for businesses, but they're always far too small.
Start with an amount that is 2-3x higher than the potential gain from doing the thing. Let's say that's $100,000, just for the sake of discussion.
Divide that by the chance of a given instance of the crime being caught / reported, and successfully prosecuted. Let's say that chance is 0.01% (1 in 10,000 instances) - I think this is a very low estimate, but again, just for the sake of discussion. We're now sitting at $10,000,000 per instance.
Add a deterrent increase - let's say 100%, so $20,000,000 per instance.
We've all seen Fight Club, I'm sure:
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere travelling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall?
Take the number of vehicles in the field, A.
Multiply it by the probable rate of failure, B.
Multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement, C.
A x B x C equals X.
If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
The key is to make sure that X is always considerably higher than A x B x C. Always.
True, but as they noted in the article, this gives the law a few more teeth, like the ability to extradite people, so while it likely won't effect the big corporations, I think small fly by night companies that avoid the law by moving out of state will be held accountable.
Sounds like a job for the taco supreme court or in latin scotus ignorus