For years, dirty rat bosses who make people work without pay - working off the clock - have gotten away with stealing billions from workers who were afraid for their jobs. Some scab workers have even gone along with it, out of some twisted sense of loyalty to a company or person.

Even when they're caught, they've escaped by paying fines, or even winning their cases with high-priced lawyers. Finally, with some decent heads at the DOL, maybe things are turning around. Mischa Gaus of Labor Notes wrote a story about one asshole who stole a solid 1.5 million dollars from his workers, and now is busting rocks in some penitentiary.

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Wage-thieving employers, beware: the owner of a New York boutique chain accused of shorting workers by $1.5 million was taken away in handcuffs Tuesday.

State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo alleges the owner, David Cohen, not only paid some workers less than $5 an hour and ignored overtime rules as workers clocked 60-hour weeks—but also offered a worker $50,000 to inform on organizing in the stores.

Cuomo charges that Cohen underrerported salaries and the number of employees to the state, robbing the unemployment insurance fund and leading to 38 felony counts for filing false business records and “offering a false instrument.”

He faces up to four years in jail and civil action to recover the wages stolen from 150 workers. The arrest follows months of organizing in the stores by the Retail Action Project, an organizing venture sponsored by the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (a Food and Commercial Workers affiliate).



For the whole story:

http://www.labornotes.org/2010/02/ny-boutique-boss-arrested-faces-4-years-jail-stealing-wages