Janice Schakowsky: “All of us know that hardworking men and women in all of our districts are having a rough time these days. Many are paid…”

“All of us know that hardworking men and women in all of our districts are having a rough time these days. Many are paid low wages or wages that are not enough to meet their family's basic needs. Those problems are made even worse when workers are the victims of wage theft. Billions of dollars are actually stolen from workers through wage theft, and wage theft occurs when workers are forced to work off the clock, denied earned overtime pay, or paid less than the minimum wage. Workers can lose pay because of illegal paycheck deductions, be denied their final paychecks, or not be paid at all. Interfaith Worker Justice, based in Chicago, has been working to stop wage theft for years. In 2008, its executive director, Kim Bobo, wrote a book called ``Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid--And What We Can Do About It.'' My amendment is one step we can take to do something about it. My amendment is simple. The idea is the same idea that has been offered on the House floor by my friend and colleague, Representative Keith Ellison, and is supported by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It says that Federal contractors have a duty to pay their workers their legally-earned wages and that corporations that don't pay their workers their legally-earned wages shouldn't benefit from Federal contracts. Similar language has successfully been added to the Energy and Water and Department of Defense Appropriations bills.…”